


The Univac and the Humanoid

by Firebog



Series: Climb Aboard My Spaceship [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Alternate Universe - Space, Artificial Intelligence, Cyborgs, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Medical Experimentation, Medical Procedures, Medicinal Drug Use, Outer Space, Science Fiction, Space Stations, Strangers to Lovers, weird cyborg/AI sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-04
Updated: 2015-10-04
Packaged: 2018-04-24 15:45:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 44,883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4925533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Firebog/pseuds/Firebog
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Meg is an intelligence- there's nothing artificial about her- with dreams of finally landing a job in medicine. Castiel has dreams of living a peaceful life which is rather hard to do when all citizens of New Eden are required to serve in the military. Infinity Regressions Analysts looks like the answer for both of them and Branch 8 is hiring. </p><p>But Infinity Regressions isn't what it appears to be and neither Meg nor Castiel get what they signed up for.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> All units are given in SI units, so if there is a casual mention of temperature being 297 do not worry they are not boiling alive. 297 is in Kelvins.
> 
> The title of the story comes from the song of the same name The Univac and the Humanoid by Sheldon Allman. Definitely go give it a listen.
> 
> Three words to know in this fic:
> 
> Agrestal: literally means of or relating to plants growing wild in fields and uncultivated areas, but in this context it means a human not genetically modified nor cybernetically enhanced in anyway. 
> 
> Anthrogenic: very likely to be genetically modified and cybernetically enhanced but includes humans who are only one or the other as well.
> 
> Intelligences: essentially artificial intelligences but I thought the word artificial would probably fall out of favour as AI become considered humans. Intelligences are either 'born' what they are or are the consciousness of a flesh and blood human transferred into a machine.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Meg waited nervously for Ruby to say something. Anything. She wouldn't admit it but she needed at least one person to say it was a good idea and mean it. She needed someone to tell her that working for a place like Infinity Regressions wasn't selling her soul to the devil.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  
> 
>  
> 
> Art created by the lovely [Maidenpool](http://maidenpool.tumblr.com)  
> Beta'd by the ever patient [ArtsyPoopy](http://archiveofourown.org/users/ArtsyPoopy/pseuds/ArtsyPoopy)

"Infinity Regressions?" Her father stared down at her notepad. Meg watched him re-read it for the fourth time. He set her notepad down and scratched at his head. "I won't discourage you if you really want to go but.... _Infinity Regressions?"_   

Meg linked up with her proxy and sent it over to her father. She snaked out one long spidery limb and picked up the notepad. She read it over again. She couldn't quite believe it either. She had read it hundreds of times since getting the message yesterday. Infinity Regressions had offered her the medical department head position for Branch 8.

Branch 8 wasn't exactly a huge station and she'd mostly be dealing with accidents and the occasional upgrade but this was it. This was her big break into full time medicine. It wasn't a short term contract, it wasn't an _assistant_ to the assistant job. This was a full time position and they wanted her.

This was her chance to _finally_ get out of environmental control.

"I know they're not a part of PEST but it's better than getting tied down in UN red tape." Meg said. She tossed the notepad back down on the table. "At least with Infinity anyone can buy information. The UN just hoards it to itself." She threw a limb up to wave dismissively. "And it's not as if I'll be doing research through them. I'll be treating patients. I can still share any independent research I do in my free time."

Her father wrinkled his nose. " _Buy_ information." He muttered. " _Buy_ it. What century do they think we live in?"

Meg kept quiet. The problem was they lived in _this_ century. It was one of the few subjects that she didn't goad her father into arguments about. Everyone that was a part of PEST these days got themselves in a twist over buying and selling information. She agreed with her father that it was ridiculous but she could also see the writing on the wall. Whether or not they wanted to admit it nobody but PEST members shared information freely and there were fewer and fewer PEST members each year. Mariner Orbital was one of the last big PEST communities and they barely had six thousand people aboard.

The rattle of the front door opening distracted them both. The door pushed open. Her brother skulked inside trying to look upset but utterly and completely failing at wiping the smug grin off his face. He must have been listening in on the home network. She flicked her arms in a quadruple rude hand gesture. Tom gave her a look of mock hurt. Their father sighed.

Tom pushed the door closed. "Does this mean I get your job?"

"Means the position is open and you can dream about it while someone else gets it." Meg retorted. She had a special kind of relationship with her brother.  

"Nothing's final." Her father said. He looked down at the notepad on the table then back to her proxy. "Nothing's final?"

"Nothing's final. I haven't responded yet." She hadn't done anything yet but read it over and over to make sure she wasn't dreaming. Was Infinity Regression really offering her, her own practice? She read the message again. It still hadn't changed. She focused all her cameras on her father. "But I think I really want to do this."

"Great. You should." Tom grinned. Their father cleared his throat. Tom's grin dissolved into a serious look. "You've worked at this for years, you'd be great at it."

"I know. I am great. Unlike what you'd be in environmental control." Meg said. In all honesty her baby brother would probably be just as good as her at it. Probably better because he actually wanted to do it. Well, that was the thing about environmental control, everyone started off wanting to do it because it paid well. Then you did it for fifty years and it was a nightmare of boredom and people bitching about the humidity in their homes. There was a reason why it paid well. She'd let Tom find that out the hard way.

She set three hands on her father's shoulders. "Even if I do decide to go. It's Branch Eight. It's practically in the same neighbourhood as us right now. I'll be close by for years."

If a two day communications delay was close.

Her father looked at her incredulously. He knew how long the delay was. So maybe a two day communications delay was far but it wasn't as if she hadn't been farther from home. It was just the delay that made it seem farther.

"They're a week and a half away from us if you had your own ship." Tom blabbed.

Meg flicked a hand in a rude gesture behind her back that hopefully their father hadn't caught and wished she hadn't gotten rid of the built in pellet gun on her proxy from when they were kids. She would have liked to peg Tom right between the eyes for that.

Tom gestured back at her.

Their father sighed again. He motioned to the notepad. "Please think about this carefully Meg. Don't accept them because you think they're your only option. There are other options out there."

She had thought about it carefully, long before she had got the offer. She had done consulting, she had done short contracts, Infinity Regressions wasn't her _only_ option but it was her only option to do what she loved close to home _full time_.

"Don't worry." She said. She tucked the notepad into a compartment on her proxy and put it back into her room. She left the proxy there. She always seemed to give herself away with her proxy when she lied. "I'll think about it. Like you said, there's probably a ton of other options out there."

There wasn't. None as good as the offer Infinity Regressions had made but she knew it would calm her father down if he thought she was looking.

She spent the next two days writing up her response to the offer of employment and trying to coax her father into thinking it was a great opportunity. It was obvious he didn't fall for her still looking act and he responded by _'forgetting'_ to close his personal files and leaving open job postings for anything even remotely related to neuroprosthetics in PEST communities.

Tom thought it was funny. Every time a job posting was _'accidentally'_ left open he'd start talking about it with over exaggerated surprise with their father, pointing out how close it was or how short the communications delay was or how she could work from home and wasn't it such a wonderful coincidence that it just so happened to appear on the home network?

Tom could also fly into a star and die a thousand fiery deaths.

A day later she was linking up to her proxy and cutting herself off from the home network and Tom's latest _look at how convenient this is!_ speech about a job cleaning up labs that was six weeks away but would only have a thirty minute delay if they paid for a temporary communications hub. As if she had worked her way through medical school for over two decades to clean up labs.

She grabbed her notepad off her desk and locked the door to her room behind her so Tom couldn't get into her room and _make_ her listen when he got home. She headed next door to Ruby's place. She tapped out pi as fast as she could against the door.

The door ground open after thirty four digits. Her favourite frenemy answered the door with a look of supreme displeasure. Meg pushed past Ruby without saying hello.

"Thirty four digits? You busy or something? Or am I getting faster?" Meg said. She took a quick look around. Ruby wasn't working on anything as far as she could tell. She pinged Ruby's home network and got the usual _get the hell out_ shock. She hadn't been allowed onto Ruby's home network since they were ten and Meg had programmed her family's home to play a musical interpretation of pi up to three hundred digits every time someone said Ruby's name.

"I was trying to ignore you." Ruby said. She closed the door. It scraped metal against metal.

"You should really get that fixed." Meg said absently. Ruby never took her advice but they had their script worked out after all these years. Ruby acted annoyed and she acted like they were the type of friends that didn't kind of hate each other.

"You should really mind your own business." Ruby retorted.

Meg took a look at what her heat sensors were saying and found the chair Ruby had been sitting in. She headed over to it and plunked down making sure to let all eight limbs of her proxy sprawl.

Ruby wrinkled her nose at the sprawl of limbs. Meg snickered. Half the reason her proxy looked like a darker-than-space octopus from someone's nightmare was because of Ruby's nose wrinkling disapproval when they were kids. It hadn't been fashionable then and it wasn't fashionable now.

But Ruby's nose wrinkling had only gotten better with age. Ruby reached over to a switch on the wall and flicked on the high frequency strobe light. The room flashed in a daze of colours. Meg quickly turned off all her visual feeds except what basic anthrogenic eyesight could see. The strobing stopped. Ruby smiled smugly at her. It was a part of their love-hate friendship.

Meg tossed her notepad over to Ruby. "What do you think?"

Ruby caught the notepad and dragged a chair over to sit beside Meg. She shoved Meg's limbs out of the way and sat down. Her eyes flicked over the notepad. She flinched. Meg hadn't told her yet that she was going.

Ruby's eyes flicked over Meg, her face carefully blank.

Meg waited nervously for Ruby to say something. _Anything._ She wouldn't admit it but she needed at least one person to say it was a good idea and mean it. She needed someone to tell her that working for a place like Infinity Regressions wasn't selling her soul to the devil.

Ruby looked back down to the notepad.

"Not that great, huh?" Meg said. She kept her limbs still and tried not to look like she was an eight-legged ball of nerves.  

"You really want to go there?" Ruby asked seriously, which wasn't fair.

Ruby was deviating from their pre-approved banter. She was supposed to say something like, _not as great as mine_ and then tear apart her response word by word and help her build it back up until Meg had something she could send in without looking like an overeager grovelling newbie. Then they'd argue about something dumb and Ruby would kick her out and she'd come back tomorrow and they'd do it again until she left.

Ruby passed her the notepad back. "You really want to work for _Infinity?"_

"No. I want to be a doctor." Meg said. She set the notepad down on the floor. "I want my two decades of medical school with twelve years specializing in BAN to actually mean something." She motioned in the vague direction Infinity Regression's Branch 8 would be floating. "It's them or the UN."

Ruby's face contorted in deep thought. She looked concerned— and _sombre_. It was like they were responsible adults or something. Then the serious expression dropped from Ruby's face and Ruby repeated the unofficial motto of PEST. "Fuck the UN." She stuck her hand out and wiggled her fingers until Meg dropped the notepad back into her hand. "Information hoarding assholes."

That twisting tension drained out of her. Ruby wasn't going to try and talk her out of it like everyone else. She might not say it in so many words but this was Ruby's way of saying _go do what makes you happy._

"Oh, I dunno." Meg said. She flickered the lights on her proxy playfully. She had never bothered to make it look anthrogenic and she wasn't about to start trying to mimic expressions. "They aren't that bad."

Ruby made a noise of absolute disgust that she usually only reserved for Meg when she started tapping out pi. " _Respect for the rights of others is peace."_ She snorted in derision. "As long as you're a part of them."

They went over her acceptance letter until she got a complaint call. The Mollies. Reduced air flow. Again. She checked all the parameters for their home. Nothing on the software end was broken, which meant one of their screaming hellions had probably shoved something into the ducts again. How five adults couldn't handle three kids she didn't know. _Her_ father managed two kids on his own and they only got into half as much trouble.

She plucked her notepad from Ruby's fingers. "I gotta go find out what the Mollies's spawn have shoved into the ducts today." She mimed pulling a mangled toy from overhead and tossing it away. "If it's gross and slimy I'll bring it back for you."

"Ugh." Ruby wrinkled her nose. "Why would you do that?"

"Because I care." Meg said serenely. She held the notepad up and gave it a shake. "If you want to keep working on this you could always open up your home network and invite me in."

"Or I could just dig my own eyes out with a spoon." Ruby said. She started shooing Meg towards the door. "At least then I wouldn't have to look at you, you eight-legged freak."

"At least I'm not falling all over the place on two measly legs." Meg retorted as she opened the door.

Ruby huffed and rolled her eyes before shoving her out the door. Meg was going to miss her when she left home.

Meg took her time strolling over to 7 Philae Ulitsa and dreading whatever fresh hell the Mollies's children had cooked up. When she finally knocked at the door Genevieve and Janet Mollies answered looking red faced and angry.

"This is the third time in the last four weeks the air flow has been suddenly blocked." Janet grumbled.

"It wasn't suddenly blocked." Meg said. She wasn't about to let them bad mouth her job even if she hated it. "It was jammed full of toys."

Meg headed over to the problem vent, leaving Janet and Genevieve behind to grumble. She put a hand up to it and started measuring airflow. Sure enough there was none. She pulled the cover off the duct. Maybe she'd weld the damn thing on so the Mollies’s children couldn't get it off anymore....or maybe she'd leave it for Tom and let him discover the joys of children on his own.

The source of the block was obvious now that she had the cover off. Bright pink goo was plugging the vent up ten centimetres in. She gave it a cursory poke. She started to pull her arm back but only got so far before she felt a tug; her hand firmly stuck to the pink goo. She gave her arm a sharp yank down but only succeeded in pulling out about thirty centimetres of flexible duct from the wall. She grabbed the duct with another hand, careful not to touch the pink goo, and tried to pull it off herself. It wouldn't budge.

She moved her arm up and down and watched as the duct went with her, attached by the pink goo. What the hell was this stuff? And how had the Mollies's children gotten a-hold of it?

She waved one of her free hands at Janet and Genevieve. "You mind telling me what I'm stuck to?" Meg asked. She flailed the duct, goo, and her arm.

Janet and Genevieve both stared at her with wide eyes. Meg let her limbs slump. She could already tell this was going to be the sort of story that was funny in retrospect but a pain in the ass to live through.

"We don't have a name for it yet but...it would be better if you didn't touch it." Genevieve said taking a cautious step back.

"Already broke that rule." Meg said. She let the duct go and gave her stuck arm a shake. The duct rattled along with her proxy and stayed firmly attached.

"We've been trying to develop a safer multipurpose adhesive." Genevieve said.

"And let me guess, this isn't the safe one." Meg said. She held up the limb stuck to the duct and started checking through the data from that limb. As far as she could tell the pink goo wasn't dissolving the arm or making it into a disgusting gelatinous mass.

"Oh. No. It's perfectly safe. We think it'll work _wonderfully_ as a medical adhesive." Genevieve said but she didn't come any closer. "We just can't figure out a safe solvent for it."

"So far only high concentrations of acids at pH one and extreme heat have worked." Janet said and added as an afterthought, "It's been a bit of a problem in the lab."

Meg looked over the duct and wondered how the Mollies's children weren't stuck with their arms in the duct. If she'd had lungs she would have done one of her father's signature sighs. But she didn't so she took out her cutter and turned it on. She grabbed the flexible duct and pulled until she had about fifty centimetres out of the wall. She sliced off the duct just after the pink goo then held the goo covered arm above herself so she wouldn't stick to anything else. She didn't want to leave part of her proxy with the Mollies.

She did a quick fix with the duct and the vent then shoved it back into the wall. She stuck her hand in the now empty duct and measured air flow. Everything looked good. Now she just had to deal with the Mollies.

She turned back to Janet and Genevieve Mollies. She shook the goo arm at them. They backed up. She stepped forward and pointed the duct and arm in their faces— careful not to let it touch them. "Next time you think about complaining to me about the airflow in your home why don't you check and see what _wonderful_ new thing your kids have jammed in there first and warn me about it."

Janet and Genevieve nodded enthusiastically and let out explosive sighs of relief when Meg moved the arm stuck to the pink goo away from them. Meg figured the lesson would stick- no pun intended- for at least a week. They asked if she wanted to go to the lab and be their guinea pig for the latest batch of solvents they had cooked up. Meg declined. The Mollies had a reputation in the labs and it wasn't a good one. Instead she asked for the research they had already done. She'd figure something out on her own instead of leaving it up to the Mollies and their weird experiments.

She let them cut a piece of a safety blanket for her. At least she could wrap the duct up and make sure nothing else stuck to the pink goo. She was just about to wrap it up when she realized that the Mollies had provided her with the perfect parting gift for Ruby. She tossed the square of safety blanket aside and left the Mollies looking horrified. She assured them- gleefully flashing the lights on her proxy- she wasn't going to get stuck anywhere she didn't want to be.

She made her way home and found Tom waiting for her with the latest accidentally left open job posting. She had half a mind to take her arm off and stick it to him and send him to the Mollies's lab.

Instead she breezed past Tom and went to her room. She detached the arm stuck in the pink goo and put it in a storage bin, careful to not let the pink goo touch anything, then ditched her proxy in the corner. She'd keep that safe for later.

She opened herself back up to the home network and stretched out. Tom was waiting for her of course but she did her best to ignore him. She idly went over the Mollies's research, their pink goo really might work as a medical adhesive if they could figure out how to dissolve it. Right now they had to make it on whatever surface they wanted to stick together. She shot off a few messages to Ruby bugging her to let her onto Ruby's home network. She was told in no uncertain terms to fuck off. Meg cackled to herself. Ruby was going to love her staying behind present.

A day later she sent off her letter of acceptance. Three days after that Infinity Regressions sent a new employees package and instructions as to where to meet their HR representative responsible for escorting new employees to Branch 8. She had to get herself from Mariner Orbital to Port Hochelaga in Laurentia‒ a UN member. There was a brief note at the end saying she'd be reimbursed for her travel expenses.

She sent off her official resignation letter to the works department of Mariner Orbital and started getting herself ready for travel. If she was going to rely on her _proxy_ to keep her brain safe then her proxy was going to be well armoured. It still gave her a serious case of the creeps how anthrogenics just walked around with their brains all exposed. She preferred thirty centimetres of pulse shielding and fire proof coatings. Sometimes she worried about her father, Tom, and Ruby. Not all humans were built as sturdy as she was.

She finished packing and tidying up loose ends at work in barely under two days making it just in time to catch the next ship into UN space‒ a rare thing for Mariner Orbital.

Her father, Tom, and Ruby all had it in their heads to go up to the docks with her. Halfway there she threw up a ruckus about having forgotten something. She raced back home. She made sure not to act suspiciously in case her father or Tom was watching on the home network. She went into her room and got some silicone patches and the storage box with her arm.

She took one last look around her family home. This was it. She was leaving. Not for good but she probably wouldn't be home for years, decades more likely. She hurried out the door before she lost her nerve.

She raced over to Ruby's door. She opened the storage container in the corridor and took out the arm. She picked it up and tugged at the duct and her detached arm. They were still firmly stuck together. She pressed the whole mess against Ruby's door. She covered any of the pink goo still showing with silicone patches then arranged the arm to wave in a friendly greeting. She smugly rippled the lights on her proxy. Ruby was going to be pissed.

Meg rushed back to the others, empty storage container tucked under one of her arms just so she wouldn't raise suspicion.

They did their sappy goodbye; Ruby called her a _seven_ -legged freak. Then Meg boarded the ship and that was it. She was off to her future in medicine, so long environmental control....so long Mariner Orbital.

She got an angry message from Ruby half an hour into her flight. Meg asked her if she could hold onto her hand for her. Ruby didn't appreciate the humour if the series of pictures of Ruby flipping her arm off were anything to go by.

The two weeks she spent on the ship to Port Hochelaga as a passenger weren't terrible. It was full of other people from PEST communities. They swapped ideas, bounced problems off of each other, and badmouthed the UN. It was the usual sort of competitive problem solving and disgruntlement. A family from a tiny outpost station called Rival Revival even seemed to have the answer to the Mollies's goo problem. She gave the family the Mollies's address and asked them to send her any of the better results. She hoped her co-workers at Infinity were half as interesting.

It wasn't until the ship docked at Port Hochelaga that she started having second thoughts. No one from a PEST community would look twice at her. Intelligences didn't have to go around pretending to be anthrogenics and it didn't matter how different an anthrogenic looked from an agrestal human. Everyone knew it wasn't what you looked like that made you human, it was the brains that counted.

The employee from Infinity sent to escort her to Branch 8 took one look at her proxy and gulped in fear.

Infinity knew she was an intelligence. She'd had to tell them, she'd need a few things not every human needed, but it wasn't as if she had sent them a headshot. All this employee knew was that he was waiting for an intelligence off a ship coming from the _mare liberum_. It turned out he hadn't expected her to have an imagination when it came to her proxy.

She went over to him and tried to keep her limbs politely to herself. "Hello."

"'....are you Meg Mironova Mariner?" The man asked. He looked like he was hoping the answer was no.

"The one and only." She was about to put three hands out to shake- it was a joke most people on Mariner appreciated- but thought she had already scared the poor guy enough as it was. He was probably UN bred and born and wouldn't know what to do.

"And you?" Meg asked as she stuck one hand out to shake.

".....Wyler Smet." The man said. He took her hand carefully and shook it. Then yanked his hand back as if he had realized he was shaking hands with a live wire. He stared down at his hand afterwards as if he was surprised to still have one.

"So where's this luxury cruise to Branch Eight?" Meg asked.

That seemed to snap Wyler out of it. He straightened his jacket and motioned to a gate a short distance from them. "You said a standard passenger vehicle was fine?"

Meg nodded. "I don't go walking around naked." She tapped the body of her proxy where she was— actually was. A jolt of fear went through her as the knowledge of just how exposed she was reared its ugly head again. She stamped down on the feeling and waved one limb in dramatic confidence. "I'm _thoroughly_ protected."

Wyler looked like he was curious about what _thoroughly_ protected meant but was too afraid to ask. He showed her over to the gate instead and then took off to see about her luggage.

Meg boarded the ship to Branch 8. One quick look around and it was obvious they had been expecting her to look more anthrogenic. She pushed furniture out of the way and made space for her proxy. She took a few pictures and sent them to Ruby with the caption, _at least it's not the UN._ The communications delay was already a day. She probably wouldn't hear back from Ruby until she got to Branch 8.

An hour later Wyler came onboard and told the pilot they were ready to go. Now it was just a week back in the direction she had come from.

The one week from Port Hochelaga to Branch 8 felt like four. The pilot, the two gunners, and her best buddy Wyler barely talked to her and the communications delay between the ship and home was getting longer each passing day. She tried to take a philosophical look on it. Everyone was the descendant of someone who'd been stuck on a ship for years with even _longer_ communications delays or no communication at all. She probably had an ancestor who had been stuck on a ship with people as reverting as Wyler for years. She could tough out one week.

Even the philosophical outlook was still painfully boring. She worked on the solvent that the Rival Revival family had suggested and kept to herself.

She was all too happy to be off the ship when it finally docked at Branch 8 of Infinity Regressions.

"Meg, I presume?"

Meg focused in on a man wearing far more layers than what anyone needed on a properly kept station. She wondered if the suit was how he tried to show off to all new employees or if that was just how he dressed, like a cartoon villain from a story.

She stuck her hand out. "Yep. And you are...?"

"Crowley." He said. He didn't hesitate to shake her hand but Meg could see the subtle flinch go through him.

"The head honcho came down to meet me himself, huh?" Meg said. She had done her research long before she had even been interviewed, if Branch 8 were a kingdom Crowley was king.

"I like to meet all the new employees personally." Crowley said like it was some in-joke that she wasn't a part of. "Welcome them to the family so to speak."

She fought back the urge to message Ruby right in front of Crowley. If Branch 8 of Infinity Regressions was one big family, Crowley was definitely the creepy uncle and her escort to Branch 8 was that cousin that was always trying to hang out with the popular crowd.

Did that make her the cool aunt? Or the black sheep of the family?

"Great." Meg said doing her best to keep the sarcasm from her voice.

Crowley motioned to something in front of him. "So, I see that you'd prefer to house yourself in your office?"

Meg took a quick look at the empty space in front of Crowley. There was nothing. Which meant he must have a visual implant and wasn't sharing. Meg took it in stride. Back on Mariner Orbital it was rude to talk about a visual projection you weren't sharing but she wasn't about to call her boss rude less than an hour after she had met him. Maybe it was normal on the Branch 8 station.

"Yep." Meg said. "I need to think _fully_ when I'm working."

One of the downfalls of the job was limited wireless range. She couldn't keep the important parts of herself safely at home because apparently Infinity was paranoid about employees stealing information and kept the personal network separate from the work network. Making a partial and sending it in to work every day was out of the question and there was no chance in fiery hell that she was keeping her entire self in her proxy for as long as she worked at Branch 8. She'd rather live out of her office. It wasn't like she needed a bathroom and a bed.

Crowley made an understanding noise- Meg doubted he understood- then waved his hand, motioning for her to follow him. "Why don't I just show you to your office? We can have ourselves a little get to know you chat."

"What about my things?" Meg said. Having someone at a commercial dock load up her belongings was one thing, it felt strange to leave her stuff sitting at a company dock.

Crowley made a dismissive gesture. "I'll have it brought to your office."

"....okay." Meg said.

Crowley headed towards a blue hallway. "Your office isn't far from the dock. Better for emergencies; being close by."

Meg knew in a roundabout way that not everything Infinity Regressions did was legal in every political zone and accidents did happen but it made her wonder just how many accidents happened that the medical facilities was neighbours with the dock.

"I'm surprised you applied to us." Crowley said as they walked down the blue hallway. "We don't get many PEST members coming to us."

"It's hard to get into medicine in PEST, particularly BAN." Meg said. Most communities were small and sent one of their own out to be trained. Mariner Orbital already had ten doctors— and enough neuroprosthetics enthusiasts to keep them busy with botched do it yourself jobs. They didn't need anymore. "I'd rather work for someone who will at least equally sell information than someone that hoards it."

Crowley chuckled. "PEST is still enamoured with the UN I see."

"Best friends these days." Meg said sarcastically.

"And our methods don't bother you?" Crowley asked curiously. "PEST members are pacifists, are they not?"

Meg laughed. That had to be her favourite stereotype about PEST. "It's the Peaceful Exploration of Space Treaty. We don't believe in using space to build and test war machines." She threw two arms out in a mock punch. "There's nothing against getting into a fight or two."

Crowley nodded. "Well. We try to avoid that but accidents do happen." He stopped in front of a double wide door. B A N was painted on in a lighter blue. "Your office." He gave her a passkey. "And your key."

Meg took the key and tried not to look too reverent about it. "Thanks."

"Your things should arrive shortly." Crowley said. "And HR will contact you for basic workplace training later today."

"Great." Meg said. Crowley excused himself. Meg barely heard him. She held the passkey up. This was it. She was a doctor and she had her own practice. She was a neuroprosthetist with an office and a lab. Soon she'd have patients. It was like she was a responsible adult or something. How in fiery hell that that happened?

She pressed the card against the scanner. The doors slid open onto her new life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PEST: Peaceful Exploration of Space Treaty. It’s an amalgamation of the real UN’s five space treaties which are overseen by COPUOS. Plus there’s a few sci-fi additions.
> 
> Mariner Orbital is indeed named for the Mariner program.
> 
> If the above did not tip you off, this is set in our world but in THE FUTURE *wavy spooky hands*


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It was a simple logic puzzle. If all citizens of New Eden served in the armed forces and persons with cybernetic upgrades were not eligible to be citizens of New Eden then getting unnaturally upgraded would revoke his citizenship and thereby remove him from the armed forces. Simple in theory, harder in practice.

 

It was a simple logic puzzle. If all citizens of New Eden served in the armed forces and persons with cybernetic upgrades were not eligible to be citizens of New Eden then getting unnaturally upgraded would revoke his citizenship and thereby remove him from the armed forces. Simple in theory, harder in practice. No one in New Eden territory would alter humans in such a way to disqualify them from citizenship. He had to leave. But leave in such a way that his intentions to defect weren't suspected.

Hannah suspected.

He stood frozen in his bedroom, his hands full of the few belongings he could take with him without raising suspicion. Hannah stood silently in his doorway; quiet and unmoving. Castiel wasn't sure what his sister would do. He'd never before asked her to choose between nation and family.

She reached out to the side table just outside the door. Castiel tensed. Could he fight back if she intended to bring him before their superiors? He'd have to kill her if he did. He'd need the time to escape New Eden territory. Could he do that? Kill his own sister so he could have his freedom? Betray the crèche for his own sake?

Her hand came back into view. She held out a bundle of tan fabric. "I thought this might be more appropriate to wear for a research project about twentieth century CE historic uniforms."

Castiel set his belongings down on his bed. He took the bundle from Hannah carefully, still wary of her intentions. He unfurled the bundle. It was a replica of an officer's coat. A trench coat. He looked up at Hannah.

"The fabric isn't accurate but the cut is." Hannah said. Her eyes narrowed in the quizzical expression common to their family. "I _think_ the cut is accurate. Your notes were....your notes."

"Thank you." Castiel said. He reached out and gave her arm an affectionate squeeze.

They locked eyes. Castiel's chest tightened with the knowledge of his plan. Hannah smiled with sadness in her eyes. She knew what he was planning. She knew and she was letting him go instead of turning him in.

"Goodbye Castiel." Hannah said. "We'll see you in ten weeks." She stepped out of his doorway before he could say goodbye.

He didn't follow her. His ship left in an hour and he still had to stop at the customs office. He gathered his things and stowed them away in his bag.

He did one last inspection of his room; removing anything that could possibly be used as evidence. He wouldn't leave his family behind to be punished. There couldn't be any evidence that they could have known.

Everything looked in order. He set up his inbox with an automatic response explaining his absence and when he'd return. He picked up his bag and strode from his room without looking back. It had only been his room once again for the last year. It wasn't hard to leave behind.

Hannah and the rest of his family were what lingered in his mind; pulling him back with every step he took forward.

He wasn't sure how he made it out the door of his family home. He had thought it wouldn't be any harder than when he'd leave for another set of ten years of service, but it was surprisingly so. This time there was no coming back.

He made his way to the customs office. That part wasn't so hard.

The officer on duty reviewed his travel plans and the personal effects he intended to bring. She asked him to verify the information, then scanned his wrist for his ID number. Satisfied that he was in fact himself and that his stated luggage was all correct she told him to sit and wait for the nurse.

He should have come earlier. There was no one else in the office- travel abroad wasn't the most common- but the nurse didn't appear for another twenty minutes.

When he did finally appear he waved Castiel into a side room wordlessly.

"Sign this." The nurse brought up the travel agreement on an old decrepit notepad.

Castiel pressed his thumb to the signature box. He didn't need to read the agreement. He had gone over it every day since he had announced his plan to go. It was a ten thousand word document and it boiled down to just four words: _come home or die._

The nurse held up a syringe. He pointed to a stool. "Sit down. Tuck your chin into your chest."

Castiel sat down and did as he was told. A chill went through him but he kept still. Inside that syringe would be a small black unassuming speck no more than three or four millimetres across. They called it a loyalty policy but it was lethal. If he stayed longer than it was timed for it would unfurl in one sharp burst of blades and electricity and that would be the end of that. The only way it could be removed outside of New Eden was surgery and that was risky without the deactivation code. He was willing to take that risk.

"Breathe out." The nurse said. Castiel let out his breath in a long slow exhale. The nurse set a hand on his shoulder. There was prick to the back of his neck. "Done."

Castiel stood and fought the urge to run his hand over the back of his neck.

"It's set for fourteen weeks, giving you a four week grace period if problems arise during your travel abroad." The nurse said. He dropped the syringe into a waste container. "If you find yourself in unforeseen circumstances that require longer than fourteen weeks you can contact a New Eden representative at any of our consulates or embassies or the New Eden UN representative. They're all cleared to increase time abroad in emergency situations." He waited for Castiel to nod before showing him to the door.

Castiel had to run to the airport to catch his ship. There was another customs officer at the doors to his ship. She checked his travel plans and asked him to confirm the information again. She unpacked his bag and inspected the contents against the items he had listed to bring. She scanned his wrist for his ID number. She had him turn around so she could scan for the implant. She asked him if ten weeks with a four week grace period was correct.

He said yes and hoped that it didn't show that he planned on finding a way to take it out before those fourteen weeks were up.

She let him board the ship.

He packed his bag a second time and walked aboard. He stowed his bag in the compartment under his seat. It was only minutes after he sat down that the ship took off, perfectly on schedule.

It was three days before he was out of New Eden territory and a week before they entered Mixteca territory. Castiel made sure to tell everyone in excruciatingly fine detail about his research project. People avoided him after the first day. They stopped talking to him by the second. He relaxed. There were no more intrusive questions that might lead him to giving away his plans.

By the end of the second week they had docked at Estación Juárez, the central hub for ships in Mixteca and home to UN Headquarters. Bright greens, reds, and yellows were splashed everywhere; Mixteca's national colours. It was a shock of colour in comparison to New Eden's preferred sombre greys and simplistic earth tones. The UN motto was scrawled above the main exit from the docks in vibrant blue, _Entre los individuos, como entre las naciones, el respeto al derecho ajeno es la paz._ In New Eden it was always written in a cool grey-blue.

Castiel didn't waste time in reporting to the New Eden representative. It was a simple check-in; proving that he was still following his intended travel plans and not straying.

It didn't take him long to find the UN headquarters where the New Eden representative's office was housed. The building would have been an ostentatious eyesore on Eden II. It was covered in vines flowering in purple, white, and pink; Castiel was sure they must wreak havoc on the station's air filters. The little of the building he could see was either bright green or purple. The only spot not a whorl of colour was the official UN sign over the door. It was impossible to tell what the inside would be like.

Castiel went in not sure what to expect. He had never before been to the UN headquarters, most of his trips outside New Eden were spent looking at the inside of a battleship and if not that then he was generally too busy keeping himself alive to appreciate enemy architecture.

Security stopped him just inside the doors and asked him in slightly off UN Standard Spanish what his business was. He explained and they sent him on his way with a smile and a visitor's tracking pass. It took him aback. They didn't even ask for him to prove his identity. And the tracking pass? He could just throw it away if he felt like it. How did they monitor security _at all?_

He walked down the hall looking for the New Eden representative's office. For a government building there was nothing functional about it. The inside gave way to huge sweeping halls that wasted the limited space on the station and some rooms seemed to be dedicated to nothing but elaborate murals from various countries within the UN. He was beginning to understand why New Eden had been late to join the UN, the extravagance probably offended most of the New Eden government's sense of propriety.   

When the bright colours and murals gave way to a serious slate blue-grey he knew he had found the New Eden office. There were two words in Enochian engraved on the door: _Gono Iadpil._ Obedience and Faith.

He stepped inside. As soon as the doors closed behind him it was like being instantly transported home. There was one bored looking secretary in a room in varying shades of grey. He looked up at him.

"Are you Nimshi Castiel?" The secretary asked. It was the first Enochian he had heard since departing the New Eden ship at the docks.

"Yes."

The secretary held out a notepad and asked him to sign in then it was the usual customary waiting. He waited for an hour before the secretary told him he could go in.

The representative was dressed in a familiar high ranking uniform of soft dark greys and sitting behind a looming black desk. She introduced herself as Nimshi Naomi. Castiel was surprised. He hadn't realized the current UN representative was related to him. Whenever an official document referred to a higher ranking official it was usually by ID number only to preserve their privacy and prevent any untoward behaviour from being aimed at their family but even within the family crèche he hadn't heard mention of her. She must have left decades ago and had little contact since. The lack of contact only made him feel _slightly_ less guilty that she was going to be under investigation if he successfully disappeared.

She didn't waste time on pleasantries or even acknowledge their relation‒ however distant it may be‒ but she was far more critical of his plans than the customs agents had been. He wasn't sure if that was because of the shared family name or if she was this thorough with everyone. She spent an hour silently reading over his plans and his intended goals and verifying facts before she looked up at him coolly.

"Madre del Astrea?" She asked.

Castiel felt his fingers twitch. His entire plan hinged on getting to Madre del Astrea. It was a small inconspicuous town on a small inconspicuous moon that boasted nothing except for one school of higher education with a very good history program. It was barely connected to the rest of Mixteca and frequently dropped off the net because they couldn't keep up with infrastructure upgrades. But more importantly it didn't have a New Eden consulate. There was no one to track his whereabouts and he'd be out of range to track remotely. He would be expected to self-monitor.

"They have an extensive collection of preserved fabrics." Castiel said. He hoped he sounded at ease. He launched into an in-depth description of fabric composition for pre-modern military garb. She waved for him to stop when he started talking about the chemical composition of buttons.

She looked over his plans a second time before speaking again. "Leave your account information with my secretary and inform us of any changes to your plans. Have a productive trip." She let him leave after that.

He thanked her and left her office for the main room. He gave the secretary his account information. The secretary told him that Madre del Astrea had terrible local food. Castiel wasn't surprised that his entire conversation had very likely been recorded and made public, few official meetings weren't. He thanked the secretary for the warning and went on his way.

His pre-booked flight to Madre del Astrea wouldn't come in for another half a day which meant he had spare time. Spare time was a rare thing in New Eden. He already knew how he was going to fill it, testing the rigors of New Eden outside New Eden territory. He bought a backup drive for his project. The New Eden representative's secretary contacted him shortly after asking if he had bought the backup drive or if the purchase had been fraudulent. It confirmed what Castiel suspected, any purchases he made would be dutifully noted.

His ship came in early and left half full. It seemed wasteful.

The handful of people on the ship were all far more interested in him than his fellow compatriots had been. It took a few minutes of explaining that he couldn't automatically translate whatever dialect of Spanish they were using but once they understood they switched to the UN's more formal version and enthusiastically asked him questions.

Castiel wondered at first whether by some fluke he had boarded a ship full of historians and anthropologists but once they asked him to repeat the word _poplin_ for a fifth time he realized they simply thought of him as curio. His accent, they informed him, was comically sombre.

It was four days travel to Madre del Astrea. By the time he got there he had already used up nearly three of his scheduled ten weeks. He would need three for a return trip if his plans didn't fall into place. That left him with four weeks to put a new life together and get the implant out of his neck.

He had a hotel room already booked; all-inclusive. He ran into the same probably he'd had on the ship to Madre del Astrea, the receptionist started speaking what Castiel thought was Italian and assumed he could translate without effort. Once he had cleared up the misunderstanding they found that Trade English was their mutual language. Castiel thought it was strange that someone would live and work in Mixteca without speaking the official language but refrained from mentioning it.

Instead he asked to switch to the opposite side of the building‒ _for the view._

The receptionist looked at him quizzically, "What view?"

Castiel motioned towards a concrete barefaced courtyard outside.

The receptionist shook his head and muttered something in his primary language that Castiel didn't understand.

In all honesty Castiel couldn't have cared less about the view. He had booked his room weeks in advance. It was entirely possible someone from New Eden had been sent ahead to set up monitoring devices. He could only switch now and hope they hadn't bugged the entire hotel.

The receptionist gave him a key- an actual pin tumbler lock key- and did a poor job of hiding a smirk at his expense when he stared down at it in dismay.

That was all that would keep someone out of his room? A few centimetres of metal?

"Know how it works?" The receptionist asked amused.

Castiel glanced up coldly. "Yes."

The receptionist recoiled under his gaze. Castiel thanked him for the room change and left to find his room.

He still checked the new room from floor to ceiling for monitoring devices. When he was satisfied he wasn't being spied upon he laid down and breathed. It was the middle of the night local time but early morning Universal Standard Time. He tried to sleep anyway but couldn't.

He could still go home. He could complete his research project and go home. He hadn't done anything illegal. There was no reason for charges to be laid against him. He had done everything a law abiding citizen of New Eden should do. He had checked in with the New Eden representative and hadn't _technically_ made any illegal purchases. The most suspicious thing he had done was ask for a room change without reporting it. He could go home. There wouldn't be any repercussions.

The next morning he took full advantage of the hotel's all-inclusive policy and ate far more than he should have at breakfast‒ a novelty for someone from New Eden. He went to the school and signed into their archives and spent the rest of the local day drafting up notes on twentieth century CE military garb.

That night he broke the law.

He sold the backup drive. He had bought it for this purpose alone. He knew he'd need untraceable money at some point. A preloaded credit card from an unregistered business owner who bought items without asking for proof of ownership was a start.

He stopped at the first place willing to sell him network access anonymously. It was a restaurant‒ the receptionist was right, the local cuisine was atrocious.

He spent the next four hours there searching for a medical facility that could take out the implant in his neck. He hadn't been able to do this research at home without attracting attention. What good and honest citizen of New Eden would be looking for a place to remove the loyalty policy?

It didn't take long for him to conclude that he'd need to go outside the UN. An international treaty against contributing help towards military defectors meant no hospital would touch him and his plan to have his citizenship revoked would take far too long to be helpful. He'd be dead long before then.

That left a vast array of micro-nations, pirate fleets, corporations, and eccentrics that lived in the _mare liberum_ that paid little mind to UN treaties.

In two weeks he had completed his research at the school, learned that Madre del Astrea fell off the network almost routinely at peak use hours, and determined that pirates and eccentrics were not people whose hands he wished to put his life in.

The corporate options were no guarantee. He needed to apply for a current open job position and only if they hired him would they provide for his medical needs. He set up a free mailing account and applied to six different companies that weren't terribly concerned about hiring defectors. He hadn't yet heard back from any of them.

He wasn't going to leave his life to if's and maybe's. Ultimately his choices came down to two micro-nations, People for a Free Space and Hinterland. Both would require him to pay up front for the procedure and neither would guarantee success but they would both do it if he got himself there. He needed to read more about them before making a decision and he wasn't sure if he could acquire the money anonymously. Draining his bank account would look highly suspicious to New Eden.

He was about to log out of his network account for the night when a blue bubble with a tiny yellow one inside appeared at the top of the screen. He opened his inbox. There was a message from Infinity Regressions Analysts, one of the companies he had applied to. While they _did_ operate within the UN, the vast majority of their physical locations were in the _mare liberum_. He had applied to a data analysis specialist job posting. New Eden had trained him well in two things, how to destroy things and how to file reports. Data analysis specialist appeared to be the latter.

He read through the message. Infinity Regressions wanted him to fill out their interview survey. He paid for another hour of network use then filled the survey out.

The next day he had two messages. One from Richard Roman Enterprises informing him that he wasn't qualified for the position he had applied for at SucroCorp but that he was more than qualified for a different position at a different company under their umbrella. Castiel opened up the file they had sent. It was a job offer; a position at Kinetic Artillery field testing weapons.

Weapons testing. He would be good at that and RRE didn't want to interview him. They were already offering a job and offering to cover the full costs of having the implant removed and any upgrades he wished. They'd send someone to get him in two days time. It would be easy and convenient.

But working and living under the thumb of a war machine was exactly why he had left home. He didn't want that for his life any more.

He opened the other message. Infinity Regressions had approved of his interview. If he made his way to Port Hochelaga in Laurentia an HR employee would meet him and escort him to Branch 8 of Infinity Regressions, a station just outside of UN jurisdiction. He had to pay his own way until he reached Port Hochelaga but they'd reimburse him and his medical costs would be fully covered.

Castiel's eyes flicked between the two offers. One would be simple to go to. There was much less a chance that he'd be spotted and known to be a deserter. The other offer would be harder to take up. He'd need more money. He'd have to find safe passage. He'd have to cover his tracks. There was a greater risk of being caught.

But he wouldn't have to kill anyone filing reports, field testing weapons would be messy.

He responded to Infinity Regressions and told them he'd be in Port Hochelaga as soon as he could.

The next day he sold everything he had brought with him except the clothes he was wearing and the coat Hannah had given him. He even sold his research with the stipulation that it couldn't be used for four weeks. He was confident he'd be out of UN territory by then.

His next step was buying a ticket on the next ship off Madre del Astrea. The right ticket. He needed a ship that would leave just before peak hours. If he timed it right Madre del Astrea would fall off the main network just after his ship had left. If New Eden was spying on him they'd have to wait for the communications hub to come back online before they could start tracking him down.

The right ticket turned out to be for a ship called _Adaptor_ that was leaving half an hour before peak hours. It even stated in the fight plan that they left on time before communications went down‒ and included a small passive-aggressive lecture on the local government's failings for not upgrading the communications hub.

The woman that greeted him as he boarded the _Adaptor_ gave him a questioning look and asked him if he had any luggage. He told her no and hoped she wouldn't ask more questions. It was terrifying. He had to rely on complete strangers to not report him. The only people he'd ever had to rely on before were his family or his unit.

His flight to Port Hochelaga was the most nerve wracking thing he had ever done, it was far worse than the most bloody combat he had seen. He was a deserter now. He didn't have anyone to call for back up. For the first time in his life he was utterly alone.

The _Adaptor_ reached Port Hochelaga a day before the flight had been projected to arrive. He left the ship expecting to be greeted by the local police but the dock was empty except for the other passengers of the _Adaptor_. No one was there to charge him with being a military deserter. He didn't breathe easier. It was possible he had been reported as one but no one knew where he was.

He tensed when a man approached him.

The man started asking him questions in a language Castiel didn't recognize. He held up a notepad with the Infinity Regressions logo. Castiel wasn't sure if he should acknowledge the logo or not. It was very likely that this man was the HR representative that was supposed to escort him to Infinity Regressions Branch 8 but it was also possible he was telling him he was being arrested for trying to go there without his government's permission.

The man jolted in surprise when he realized that Castiel didn't understand him. He switched to halting UN Standard Spanish that was barely intelligible.

"I speak Trade English." Castiel offered.

The man's body relaxed. He switched to Trade English. "Are you Nimshi Castiel?"

Castiel weighed his options carefully. What if this man was a ruse and was waiting for him to incriminate himself? If he said no he could walk away and try to figure out what to do next; probably contact Richard Roman Enterprises and hope for the best.

"I'm Wyler Smet." The man continued when Castiel didn't answer. "I'm with Infinity Regressions. I'm here to escort you to Branch Eight....assuming you are Nimshi Castiel." The man looked at him quizzically.

Castiel decided that if he really was being arrested they probably would have sent someone that could speak the language of diplomacy.

"Yes. I'm Nimshi Castiel." Castiel said. He braced himself for an attack that didn't come.

Wyler Smet looked him over then leaned around to look at the gate he had just come from. His eyes flicked over something in the middle distance. "....you don't have any personal possessions with you?"

Castiel shook his head as he slowly relaxed his stance. Wyler Smet was either who he said he was or else the most dedicated undercover police officer he'd ever met.

Wyler Smet looked like he wanted to ask why Castiel was traveling with nothing but decided against it. "You mentioned in your letter of acceptance that your situation was time sensitive." He held out the notepad. "Sign here and we'll go."

Castiel stuck his thumb onto the signature box.

Wyler Smet coughed. "With your name. We don't fingerprint employees."

Castiel drew his finger across the box, quickly writing out his name. New Eden had never wanted to know his name, just his thumb print and his ID number.

"Alright." Wyler Smet said. "This way."

Castiel followed him to a different gate and on board a small company ship. Wyler Smet didn't mention a ship name but waved at an empty space on the wall. They left almost as soon as the doors were closed. Other than the crew of the ship and the HR representative Castiel was the only person onboard. He picked a seat and sat down. He didn't have anything else to do but wait for someone to point him towards the passenger quarters and even then, all he'd be doing is waiting somewhere else.

Wyler Smet sat down across from him. His eyes flicked rapidly over something in front of him but as far as Castiel could tell there was nothing there. Castiel wondered if that was what it looked like when someone started unnaturally upgrading themselves. Was Wyler Smet talking to someone else? Reviewing information? Was this still Wyler Smet? Maybe someone else had taken over. He had heard AI could do that; take over the bodies of people who left themselves unprotected.

Did he really want to leave himself open to that kind of danger just to revoke his citizenship with New Eden?

Wyler Smet noticed him staring. He blinked twice. Then looked Castiel over in curiosity. "Are you agrestal?"

"No." Castiel said. New Eden might not allow for cybernetic upgrades but they were happy to participate in genetic manipulation. "New Eden doesn't allow its citizens any unnatural upgrades."

"Unnatural?" Wyler Smet asked confused.

"Wired, I believe is the term." Castiel said. He had heard it in passing when New Eden joined forces with other countries from time to time. It had always been unnerving to watch the other soldiers react to invisible things and silent voices.

Wyler Smet stared at him as if he thought Castiel was joking. Castiel stared back seriously. Wyler Smet arched a surprised eyebrow then went back to whatever it was he was doing when his eyes flicked rapidly back and forth. Wyler Smet didn't talk much after that. None of the crew talked to him much after that.

It was a two week trip to Branch 8 of Infinity Regressions. Castiel spent much of it in solitude. The crew wouldn't acknowledge his presence much of the time and Wyler Smet only spoke to him to ask him intrusive questions about how he could possibly function without basic access to the network at all times.

When the ship finally docked at Branch 8 Wyler Smet congratulated him for acquiring the data analysis specialist position- and for choosing to become a real person- then left him standing alone at the dock. Castiel watched Wyler Smet go. In New Eden Wyler Smet would be the one who'd be considered not quite human.

"I would wager a guess that you're my new employee." Said a voice in oddly accented Trade English.

Castiel turned to see a shorter man standing behind him. He hadn't heard him approach which was impressive; to say Castiel was very spatially aware was an understatement. Most of his life had been spent training to be aware of his surroundings or putting that training to use.

"Yes." Castiel said. "And you are?"

"Crowley." The man said.

Castiel nodded. He had done his research. Crowley was the manager for all of Branch 8. Castiel wasn't sure if it boded well for him if the manager was there to greet him. Had he already inadvertently made a mistake?

"Did Wyler give you the new employee run down?" Crowley asked. He was staring at Castiel but his eyes flicked back and forth rapidly, attention clearly elsewhere.

"No." Castiel said.

Crowley hummed then narrowed his eyes as if he was severely put out. "Well, in that case I'll give you the short hand version and make sure the new employee package is sent to you."

"I don't have any way to access it." Castiel explained.

Crowley waved his hand dismissively. "I'm aware. There's a company notepad waiting for you in your rooms." He started walking, not waiting to see if Castiel would follow. "Your wage is paid in ISD. Bonuses are…. _negotiable._ We run on UST. Twenty five hour days. Eight day weeks. Five days on, three days off." He turned abruptly down a blue corridor. "I assume given your background that won't be a problem for you but if it is we have some therapy options available until we've gotten you fixed up."

"It won't be a problem." Castiel said. The actual solar day of Eden II was just shy of 24 hours but he had been living on UST for the last ten years during his third stint of required service.  

"Good." Crowley came to a stop. "And here we are." He waved a hand at the door in front of them.

Castiel peered at the door. B A N was painted on it; the lighter blue lettering slowly flaking away.  

"Meg will get rid of your little problem and review your eligibility for upgrades." Crowley said. He stopped. His eyes flicked back and forth again. "She'll let you in when she's ready for you."

With that Crowley strode away. Castiel watched him until he disappeared around a corner. He looked back to the door and B A N in blue lettering. He supposed it probably stood for biomechatronics and neuroprosthetics but the irony of the acronym was not lost on him. B A N was banned in New Eden. It seemed to be fitting commentary on his new life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Estación Juárez - Juárez Station
> 
> Entre los individuos, como entre las naciones, el respeto al derecho ajeno es la paz - Among individuals, as among nations, respect for the rights of others is peace.
> 
> ISD - Indium Standard Dollar. Indium has become the basis of currency because we like our touch screens (which are usually made with indium tin oxide).


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "If I were artificial I'd run on algorithms." Meg said. So sue her, she was still defensive about being called artificial.

 

Meg powered down the heat welder and started the clean up from her morning's work while she waited for her project to cool‒ someone in maintenance had managed to crush their arm in a recycling unit and needed some new bones.

She idly looked through her messages while her cramped lab took care of itself. She came to a stop at one message flagged as urgent. She opened it up and cursed to herself. Someone- Crowley- had wedged a job into the middle of her morning on short notice.

She flickered the lights in her lab out of frustration. She had told him from _day one_ that if it wasn't an emergency and he wanted something done he could send all the messages and alerts he wanted but if he wanted something done _right_ he had better schedule it a few days ahead and not interrupt her.

Five years later and she had learned Crowley _loved_ to interrupt her and _still_ demanded quality work. If IR hadn't had the only job in neuroprosthetics anywhere nearby, she would have quit a year ago. Her lab was too small, her office was too small, the med-cubicle was too small. The only thing that hadn't been too small was the lobby and she had converted that into work space a week after she had arrived; unless they were dying, people could just wait out in the hall. She'd had to put her proxy in storage just so she could keep all the equipment up and running instead of having to guess what she might need in an emergency.

She took a quick glance through the work order and cursed again. Crowley had sent her a newbie to be evaluated for basic upgrades as if an assessment was an _emergency._

She has was just about to flick on the com on the door and tell the newbie to screw off and make a real appointment when she caught the words _loyalty policy_ in the work order. If she had a body she'd have chills. She knew some mercenary groups used them but she had never really believed governments delved into that kind of thing. They were nasty little devices tucked away snug at the base of the skull; microscope blades and razor sharp wire filaments all coiled up just waiting to release, usually with a jolt of electricity to scramble nerves.

A ticking loyalty policy was an emergency. For once she could forgive Crowley for interrupting her work.

She started up the sterilization of the med-cubicle while she read over everything she could find about the device in case they had changed much since she got out of med school. It turned out no one had bothered much on improving them, they usually got the job done.

She opened the lab doors and directed all her cameras towards the entrance.

A cautious looking man in a long coat right out of a quaint old detective movie peered through the open door of her lab.  

"Sorry about the wait, you were pencilled in on short notice." Meg said. Like almost every other job Crowley ever had for her. "Come in. I've got everything ready for you." Well, she would by the time he got there.

He hesitated like he'd never heard Runglish before. He started speaking in Stan-Span so stiff she could probably break one of the lab arms on it. "I'm sorry I don't speak..."

She switched over to Stan-Span. "Sorry. Everyone on Branch Eight runs auto translate. You forget sometimes that we're all jabbering at each other in our mother tongues. Come in."

He stepped through the doors. "No apology is necessary." He said looking around the lab. He craned his head around taking it all in, edging back when machines moved out of his way or rustled around in the depths of her lab. He kept his face carefully blank but the rest of him tensed like he expected something to jump out and bite him.

The newbie made his way over to the med-cubicle door. His eyes flicked rapidly across her lab like he was looking for the emergency exit.

"Expecting someone-" She scanned through the work order for a name, Nimshi Castiel. "-Nim?"

He tensed. He looked around again. Meg thought he might bolt for the doors before she got that government death trap out of his neck. He let out a slow breath. "I was expecting someone." He said and cast another look around, squinting at the bustle of machines deeper in her lab.

The med-cubicle finished the sterilization and beeped. She opened the door slowly so he wouldn't jump out of his skin. He stepped back from the door and watched it open. She was starting to wonder if he was agrestal. Crowley had sent a handful of agrestals to her since she started working for IR and they had all acted like they were sure she was going to wire them up and take their bodies over.

She turned the medical arm on and waved him in, "Come deeper into my lair Mr. Detective and I'll get you fixed up. No more enforced loyalty."

He narrowed his eyes at the medical arm and took a half step into the med-cubicle. He looked around confused then took a second step bringing himself inside. She snapped the door shut behind him before he could run. She wasn't opposed to gassing him if she had to and taking the loyalty policy out while he was under.

She opened a cabinet and took out a sealable bag. She held it out to him. "Clothes off and into the bag." She commanded. She waited for him to undress and stuff his clothes into the bag then spritzed him down with an antiseptic. He only flinched a little, her patients all told her it prickled.

She pulled out a sealed and packaged disposable gown from a drawer. She held it up, "You want one?"  

"Yes, please." He said. She tossed the package at him. He caught it, tore it open, and pulled it on. He looked around again as if expecting someone else to pop out from behind the medical arm.

She waved the medical arm at the operating table. "Lay down flat on your stomach and make yourself comfortable."

He looked at the table for a moment then cast one more serious glance around the tiny room before sitting down. He definitely wasn't making himself comfortable. He looked tense enough to snap in half.

"Alright Nim. My name's Meg in case no one told you and I'll be your doctor today and for however long you work at Branch Eight." Meg said. She gave him a moment to relax then held up the IV. "I'm going to put the IV in now." He nodded and held his arm out. She slipped the needle through the skin and into the vein and waited for the effects to kick in. It wouldn't take long.

The med-cubicle was silent except for the slow steady breathing of her emergency patient. If she didn't have the heart monitor on she'd never guess that this guy was nervous. He should be sweating bullets right now if his heart was anything to go by but he was calmly staring at the floor like he did this every day.

"So where are you from Nim?" Meg asked to pass the time while the analgesic took effect and hopefully calm him down. She started up the scans to do the upgrade assessment while she was at it. No point in wasting time.

"Castiel." He said.

"Never heard of it." Meg said. There were a lot of countries in the UN she had never heard of.

"No, Castiel is my given name. Nimshi is my family name." He said. His heart beat slowed fractionally. "I'm from Eden two."

"Hmm. Well, I've never heard of Eden two either." She pricked his skin lightly with a needle. He flinched. They'd need a little bit longer. "Station? Orbital? Planet? Moon?"

"Planet." Castiel said. He flexed his fingers. If she angled some of her cameras just right she could see a barely there perplexed look on his face. No doubt he was starting to notice the analgesic taking effect. "In New Eden."

"That's some really original naming." Meg commented. Something about the boring names seemed to go with the lethal little implant they had stuck in this guy. Evil being boring rang true somehow. "I'm from an orbital myself. Never done any clod hopping."

"I wouldn't recommend Eden two if you were to start." Castiel said grimly.

Meg would have laughed if it were anyone else. Here this guy was, heart pounding away with nerves, and he was shit talking his home world like anyone else. It would have been funny if she weren't taking out a death trap from the base of his skull. Whoever the government of New Eden was she could already tell she wouldn't like them. No one deserved to have something like that stuck into them.

She pricked his skin again. He didn't flinch. "Okay. I'm going to start soon. You have any questions?"

He didn't waste any time. "Isn't it unusual for a neuroprosthetist to work remotely?"

"Not working remotely." She said roughly. She hadn't realized he didn't know she wasn't anthrogenic like him. "I'm an intelligence."

His body tensed then relaxed. He was quiet for a moment before adding, "And you're qualified?"

"Med school and then twelve years specializing in BAN." Meg said flatly. She'd had this conversation with nearly every employee who had come her way since she had started work at IR. She'd thought it was a fluke at first, she had never run into blatant racism throughout PEST, but the longer she worked for IR the more she began to suspect that PEST was unique. She used to get defensive but slowly it had been just too draining to correct people. "That qualified enough for you?"

He nodded. "Yes."

"Great, then don't move and let's get started." Meg said. She picked up a scalpel and moved in. He jerked away at the first press of scalpel to his neck and rolled off the table in one smooth motion. She checked all his readouts. He was fine. She pulled the scalpel back. "What's wrong?"

"You're not going to wait?" Castiel asked warily. His eyes flicked around the room and stopped when he spotted a camera in the corner.

"For what?" Meg asked.

"For the anesthetic to take effect." Castiel said. He eyed the equipment around him. Meg watched his heart rate go up. He looked up at the camera again. "I'm not an AI. I feel pain you know."

"Not right now you don't." Meg reached out slowly and took his arm. She picked up the needle she had been testing his reactions with and pricked him again. He looked at his arm. He pinched the skin hard and frowned. He glanced up at the camera. Meg pumped a bit more analgesic into him just in case. "I've given you a strong analgesic. And by strong I mean you could happily take out your own kidneys with a spoon and it wouldn't hurt." She pointed to the table. "I need you awake for this so if you'd kindly hop back on the table and let me do my job we'd all be happier."

Castiel looked between the camera, the medical arm, and the operating table. He edged back to the table and laid back down. He breathed deep and let it out slowly.

"Okay. Now don't move." Meg said. "And no talking."

She waited for him to get settled before she pressed the scalpel to his skin once more. He tensed but he didn't move. She pressed a bit deeper and started to get to work. She would like to have done it with scopes but from what she had read there were a few kinds of loyalty policies that wrapped around the spinal column as soon as they were injected. She wouldn't know what kind it was until she started looking and by then she might have triggered it. It was better to just go in thinking the worst.

"And by the way, if I were _artificial_ I'd run on algorithms." Meg said. So sue her, she was still defensive about being called artificial.

\---

He had never before in his life met an AI. New Eden didn't use them‒ or allow them citizenship. He wasn't sure what the appropriate term was. Either way there were no AI in New Eden except for tourists and they had to be accompanied by an anthrogenic, register their proxy vessel, and stay within designated zones.

Eden II wasn't a designated zone so he had never met one before today and now he was trusting his life to one. All he could think of were the horror stories that had led New Eden to banning AI. They could be in nearly anything; they could snatch bodies, they could steal ships. They were impossibly hard to destroy because they could copy themselves and keep backups or send partial copies in their place.

He felt the press of blades and peeling back of skin and flesh but none of it hurt. It was an unsettling experience. That an AI was facilitating it didn't help him to relax.

"Wiggle the fingers on your right hand for me." The AI said.

He wiggled his fingers. The AI hummed in approval. It told him he was doing good. Except it didn't have vocal cords to hum with or fingers to wiggle. How would it know if he was doing good?

The AI kept working. Sometimes it'd swear, in English and some language he didn't recognize, and occasionally it would mutter, _tak tak tak._ He didn't know machines could mutter.

The tug and pull and parting of flesh continued on. He wasn't sure how long it had been when the AI asked him to tap each finger to his thumb on both hands then curl his toes. He did what it asked and it declared the surgery done.

"Looks like I got it all." The AI said. "Just hold still while I stitch you back up."

He felt droplets dash across the skin of his neck accompanied by a powerful chemical smell. This part was familiar at least, though normally there was more pain involved with getting liquid stitch sprayed on.

"You can sit up now." The AI said.

He sat up and watched the medical arm place something almost too small to see into a bag similar to the one it had asked him to put his clothes in. The arm sealed the bag then brought some type of instrument over top of it. There was a quiet snick! The seemingly empty bag suddenly had a small clump of wires so thin he could barely see them. The bag was quickly vacuum sealed then tossed to him.

"Your citizen-chip." The AI said.

Castiel looked around the room not sure where to look. Was the AI in the medical arm? Did it stay in the medical ward's network? He settled on the camera. "Thank you."

"Just doing my job."

He was grateful anyway even if it was only a machine.

"Alright. So I did most of the assessment while you were sitting still for me." The AI said as the medical arm moved around him and brought a small instrument with a light up to his eyes. "I just need to check your eyes and do a nervous system scan and then you can take off."

The light was flashed in his eyes half a dozen times. The AI hummed to itself. It asked him to lay back on the table while it did the nervous system scan. It took seconds. He had thought a medical assessment for cybernetic upgrades would take hours. It seemed like a complicated procedure.

"I estimate one hundred and eighty four hours of surgery." The AI said.

He clamped down on the urge to stare at....the camera...? To stare at the camera in wide-eyed horror, his lifetime of training nearly slipping. 184 hours of surgery? And people _elected_ to do that? _He_ had elected to do that?

The arm pulled away from him and let him sit up. The AI laughed. "Don't worry, I don't usually kidnap people to spend a week in my lab. This isn't something you get done all at once."

Castiel didn't know how it knew that he was worried. He knew his face was carefully blank of emotion. Did it use the medical equipment to monitor him?

"We'll get you fixed up over the course of twenty weeks." The AI said. The medical arm tossed his clothes, still in the sealed bag, at him. "I sent the results of your exam to you, along with some relevant information about the procedure. If you have any questions after reading the pamphlets shoot me a message or drop by if you don't think I can answer them _remotely."_

Castiel sensed that his earlier question about working remotely may have gone over poorly. Had he offended it? Could one offend a machine?

He dressed in the med-cubicle. The door slid open. He picked up the vacuum sealed bag with the loyalty policy implant on his way out. He'd mail it back to New Eden just to make sure they didn't send anyone after him for theft.

Just before he left the AI reminded him to read the information it had sent him, though he didn't know where it had sent it too. Did he already have a company inbox? Was there going to be actual written notes left on his— he didn't know where his living quarters were. He turned around to ask the AI where he should go but the door to the lab snapped shut in front of his face.

Where did he go now? Crowley hadn't told him where his quarters would be or who he should report to. He was left standing alone in a pale blue hallway with a faint sting slowly building up in his neck as the analgesic wore off.

He looked up and down the hall. He looked down at the sealed bag that contained the cluster of wires that had been his threat to return home. He was free- or nearly so- and he didn't know what to do about it.

A woman appeared from around the corner of the hallway and approached him.

"You're the new data analysis specialist?" The woman asked in Trade English. At least he didn't have to explain he only spoke three languages, one of which no one outside of New Eden appeared to bother to learn.

"Yes." Castiel said. That was assuming that there was only one new data analysis specialist.

"Right. Follow me." The woman said and turned around. She started walking away.

Castiel caught up to her. "Where are we going?"

"To company housing." The woman said. Her eyes flicked over something invisible like all the other Infinity Regression employees. "You were assigned rooms there. You can move out if you want but company housing is free."

At least that answered his immediate _where did he go?_

The company housing was three levels up and a lengthy walk across the station. He hadn't realized how big the station that housed Branch 8 of Infinity Regression actually was.

The woman stopped in front of a door. 337 was painted on it in green. She held out a passkey. "You need that at least until you get wired up. Then you can key in your own wireless lock." She motioned for him to press the passkey to the door. He didn't know where he was supposed to put the passkey so he just reached out with it and hoped. The door slid open. The woman nodded in approval. "Your new employee package is on the table. You have the rest of the week off to get acclimatized. Work starts on the first of the week. If you have any questions message HR or your department head."

She turned around and left. Evidently people at Infinity Regressions favoured abrupt goodbyes.

Castiel watched her go before stepping into what was his home now. The door closed behind him. The room was brightly lit and furnished in white. He doubted that New Eden's reach extended this far but it wouldn't hurt to check the rooms for monitoring devices.

He combed the three rooms he had been given, a bedroom, a main room with a kitchen, and a bathroom. He didn't find any bugs. Nor did he find much else. It appeared he had gone from owning nothing but the clothes he wore to owning the clothes he wore, a notepad, a table, three chairs, a couch, and a bed. The cupboards were all bear and the drawers all empty.

He supposed it was a start.

He sat down in one of his three chairs, picked up the notepad, and started reading.

He read through the employee manual first. It was straightforward, company policies and emergency procedures, if a bit dull. He opened up the package explaining his new position in detail. It appeared he'd be relocating data until he'd been _suitably upgraded._ He wasn't quite sure what _relocating_ meant in the context of data analysis.

He searched for his department head's name and address and found it hidden away in the bulk of text on the fifth page. He sent a message to Claudia Debussy not really sure how to address her. He wasn't familiar with either name and couldn't begin to guess which one sounded like a family name or a given name and which was appropriate for him to use. He had settled on addressing her as Data Analysis Department Head Claudia Debussy and waiting to see how she replied.

There was a quick message from the finance department stating that he had been reimbursed for his travel expenses and since he had no current account with them to pick up a credit card from their office.

He puzzled over the last message in his inbox. It was simply titled, _Confidential_ , and sent by an M.M. Mariner. He opened it up to find the results of the medical assessment he'd just had. In New Eden it would have taken at least a day for a doctor to go over it. He wasn't sure if the rapid results boded well or not. Did the AI actually know what it was doing but was exceedingly fast in interpreting what it found or had it sent him nonsense?

He looked at the sender's name again, M.M. Mariner. Who was that? He scrolled through the results until he reached the end and found a signature, _Dr. Meg Mironova Mariner._

Was that the AI's name? Meg Mironova Mariner? He had thought Meg was an acronym or a diminutive for it. Or maybe Dr. Mironova Mariner was a person and Meg was their AI assistant?

He thought over what it had said and what Crowley had said about it. He wasn't sure what to think. Crowley had spoken as if it were human and it certainly had acted that way but everyone in New Eden referred to them as machines.

He set aside the philosophical debate about _what defines a human?_ in favour of reading the pamphlets that had been attached to the message that would hopefully explain what his results actually meant and what it was he was signing himself up for in order to escape New Eden.

\---

It hadn't taken Meg long to figure out that other than the occasional _accident_ or minor upgrade she didn't have much to do at IR. The newbie with the loyalty policy in his neck that had shown up earlier in the week was about as much excitement she'd had since she had started working for them— minus that one agrestal that had thrown a fit when she realized that her doctor was an intelligence.

A little moonlight consulting had been just the thing to spice up her life.

She had looked up the company's policies about employees taking outside contracts and there hadn't been anything strictly _forbidding_ it, there was some strongly worded _suggestions_ but no out right, we'll fire you.

It wasn't as if IR and Niveus were competitors. IR- she had found out- were basically corporate spies. Niveus was a charity organization that built and staffed hospitals and funded research.

Still she thought it would probably be better if she didn't advertise that she was working a second job in her spare time.

Her current consulting job with Niveus was research into parts and hardware rejection. Some people had bad reactions to upgrades, the worse ones caused total loss of whatever limb or organ that had been worked on. Sometimes that meant an arm was lost but sometimes it meant a whole nervous system. The nervous system loss was obviously one of the more fatal of reactions. This was one of those rare problems where if she figured out the solution she could actually save lives, help the unhelpable.

.....and it would be nice if she went down in medical history being known for solving the rejection problem instead of leading an anonymous life wiring up glorified data pushers.

On the topic of glorified data pushers, she had yet another message from the newbie. She read over his latest message. This time he was concerned about the extent of the nervous system wiring when it came to the nether regions. He wanted to know _what practical applications could that **possibly** have?_

Meg snickered to her empty lab. She wrote him back. There were lots of practical applications. Get kicked in the junk? Turn the pain off. Need to run a medical diagnostic? Hook up. Don't want everyone to know you like the bartender just a little too much? Turn it off. She could go on. She finished off her message asking if he was trying to chicken out on her.

She got one brief response. _I won't 'chicken' out._ Meg laughed at the quotations. Did New Eden not have chickens? She started up a search for chickens in New Eden then went back to prepping for her latest experiment. She thought she could make up some artificial cells and program them to reject hardware. They'd make the perfect candidate to test rejection.

She was busy in her office trying to spark her cells into life when the lab doors opened. She shut down all the programs related to her consulting, covered up her experiment, and made sure her office door was locked. Crowley had just walked in.

Crowley was one of the few people who could bypass her and get through the doors. It was supposed to be for emergency purposes only, so of course he abused it.

"Miss Mironova." Crowley drawled. She had grown to hate that voice forever interrupting her. "How're you doing?"

"Great." Meg said sarcastically. "Except for the crippling lack of space in my lab. How're my requests for more room doing?"

Crowley nodded absently while he looked around. Meg had the distinct feeling he was filming her lab; gathering information because that was what Infinity did even with its own employees. She would never have believed the level of paranoia at Branch 8 even if Crowley himself had told her.

"You've been sending quite a few requests about accessing the security feeds to public areas as well." Crowley said ignoring her original question. He wasn't one much for small talk. "That seems rather redundant, considering your proxy."

Meg would have liked to stab him with a needle from the medical arm. Her proxy was sitting in storage collecting dust because there just hadn't been enough room for it in her lab. Crowley knew that full and well. She had to send a request to the folks down in storage to get her proxy out of her unit. She couldn't just access the network and get it out herself. The paranoia at IR meant every department had its own network that no one else was allowed on, even down in storage.

So if she wasn't getting more space, which would let her keep her proxy in the lab, then she wanted access to the public area cameras. She wanted some human interaction, even if it was all one sided. She should honestly demand isolation pay at this rate.

"I like to people watch." Meg said.

"Hmm. We'll see." Crowley said. Which Meg had learned probably meant no.

A share request popped up in her inbox. She accepted. Suddenly there was a life-sized nervous system scan wavering in her lab. Crowley was letting her see what he was looking at.

"I read over his results." Crowley said. He motioned to the nervous system scan.

Meg assumed Crowley meant Castiel, there wasn't anyone else with an unwired nervous system on the station right now, which was interesting because those results were supposed to be private; doctor/patient only. She lodged a formal complaint with HR on Castiel's behalf. She hoped Crowley got notification of it as soon as she sent it off. If Castiel kicked up a fuss about his right to privacy being infringed on she wasn't going to let Crowley hang her out to dry.

"You're sure he's compatible with everything?" Crowley asked skeptically. It was like he didn't believe she knew what she was doing. Did twelve years of specialization mean nothing to him?

"Except for those minor immune system upgrades. But that's not really a problem as long as he doesn't decide to take up a career in practical virology." Meg told him coolly. "And that's as far as I'm commenting on it unless you can show me where he signed the release form for his records."

Crowley turned his nose up and smirked. "One can never be certain where the future might take them." Crowley said completely ignoring her last comment‒ and probably the complaint she had lodged.

"Yeah." Meg agreed. She hadn't ever expected to be working a second job because her first job was so boring she thought she might self-destruct.

Crowley hung around for another twenty minutes pretending to be interested in the wellbeing of his employees and then said something cryptic about needing to _see to things_ and left. Meg was sure he had stolen something. The longer she knew Crowley the more she thought he might be the worst excuse for a human being she had ever met‒ and she had to talk to the people down in storage.

She ran her inventory program as soon as he was gone. A few pouches of painkillers were missing. She scoffed. She would have figured that Crowley had enough money to arrange for something better than the generic brand painkiller they ordered for her.

But who knew, maybe he was a cheapskate in all aspects of his life.

She uncovered her rejection project and went back to fiddling with the artificial cells. She just couldn't get them to live very long. She started writing a message to Ruby about her problem. Maybe her favourite frenemy would figure something out, or at least bounce the problem around back home until someone gave her a clue.

She got another message from Castiel. She needed to get Tom or Ruby to record one of her father's sighs for special occasions like this one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Meg’s first language being Runglish is totally a joke about the English/Russian being bantered about in space today.  
> Clod hopping - used in the sci-fi sense, mildly disparaging term for visiting planets. Planets being the clods in question, hopping meaning short bursts of travel. It’s a little off colour because clod-hopper means foolish, clumsy, hick.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And she thought life at Branch 8 was boring. Now she had a criminal wannabe doctor and a newbie to wire up that was probably talking to a two-faced ex-agrestal.

 

His very first day of work found him trying to get more information from HR after they had alerted him to a breach on the privacy of his medical records by _NAME CLASSIFIED_ and wandering aimlessly in circles looking for what the new employee manual had simply called _the correct path_ until he realized that he could use the notepad he had been given to view the paths invisibly laid on the floors. Castiel was beginning to understand just how ubiquitous cybernetic upgrades were outside of New Eden. Not having them made navigating the station nearly impossible.

He had to turn the camera on and hold the notepad out in front of him, using it like a window onto an invisible world. More than a few people had laughed and coughed out the word _ničto_ and _faible._ He didn't know what either word meant but he gathered they were insults. Despite the less than welcoming attitude at least he had found the path that would lead him to the data analysis department.

Castiel stopped at a door with DA painted on it in violet. When he held the notepad up in front of it the door read Data Analysis with a series of post-it notes tagged to the door from other departments; mostly angry reminders from archives.

He stood in front of the door, not sure how to get in. He used the notepad to look for a bell or a com but found nothing. He reached into his pocket for his key. Maybe it held access to the department too. He pressed key to the door. It slid open with a violent _skhit!_ that sounded as though it might take one's finger off if you weren't careful.

The door opened onto a woman with hair the same violet as the DA painted on the door. She stared at him...well she stared at a spot about fifty centimetres in front of him. Castiel stepped through the doors and made sure he was well clear of them just in case they didn't have a safety stop.

The woman's eyes refocused on him. She started talking in Trade English. "You seriously only understand Trade and Stan-Span?"

It hadn't taken long for Castiel to work out what those words meant, Trade English and UN Standard Spanish.

"Yes." Castiel said wearily. He was debating on writing a sign or sending a station wide message that the new data analysis specialist only understood three languages. The number of times he had been forced to explain that he only spoke the language of diplomacy, the language of trade, and a language that no one outside New Eden appeared to know existed was excruciatingly large.

"How do you do anything without auto translate?" The woman asked with horrified wonder. "That's practically.... _agrestal."_

"I've managed." Castiel said as the door snapped shut behind him. He looked down at his notepad to see a green flashing box in the lower right hand corner. He tapped it. Suddenly he was on the data analysis's department network.

He held the notepad up. He panned the notepad around the open office. To his own eyes it was plain and bleached white. The notepad told a different story. Desks and cubicles and offices were all decorated in a bizarre mix of things, from serious sombre colours like New Eden to shifting escheresque patterns. A web of information popped up around the woman in front of him. Apparently her name was Sun Yeshire and she was going to get him acquainted with his new position.

"Sun Yeshire, I'm sorry I'm late." Castiel said. He still wasn't sure how to address anyone. Sun sounded like a family name but then so did Yeshire. He glanced down at the notepad again to see if she had an official title he could use instead.

"Just Sun." She said. She waved for him to follow her towards a desk at the back. "Until you get fixed up you'll be returning data chips to archives and picking up any we request." She pointed at the air above the desk. "You need to sign off on them when you pick them up or return them to archives and record the time and date of pick up, time of arrival at the office, time and date of departure from the office, and time of return." She twisted her finger at something. "It's not hard. I'll take you through the first drop off and pick up."

Castiel held the notepad up and looked for what it was she was looking at but found nothing. Before he could ask her to clarify what she had been pointing at she had strode away. He breathed deeply and let it out in a covert sigh. Did no one at Infinity Regressions believe in formally ending a conversation?

He stayed at the desk and tried to find something that would help him on the notepad. Sun reappeared shortly after with a small box.

"Data chips." Sun declared. She opened the box and spread out the chips- each the size of his thumb nail- on the desk. She stared at them for a moment then collected them back up and deposited them in the box. "There. Time and date and signature. Done and done and done. It's easy."

"I can't do that." Castiel said. He didn't know how he had been offered this job. He had made it abundantly clear that he had no cybernetic upgrades and Branch 8 of Infinity Regressions had hired him anyway but so far from what he had seen he was incapable of doing the job without them. He was nearly incapable of finding his way around the station.

"I don't have...." He wasn't sure how to phrase it. Wyler Smet had seemed upset when he had referred to them as _unnatural_ upgrades and _wired_ was unprofessional slang. He picked the technical term. "I don't have any cybernetic upgrades."

Sun stared at him blankly.

"I can enter the data in manually." Castiel motioned to the notepad. He was more than adequate with a stylus or a keyboard.

Sun continued to stare at him.

"If that's acceptable." Castiel added.

Sun still hadn't moved. Castiel was beginning to worry that the horror stories were true. What if Sun Yeshire was being taken over as he spoke?

Sun blinked twice. "Claude says there's a scanner in one of the supply closets and that you can use the notepad to sign."

"Claude?" Castiel asked.

"Debussy. She thinks it's funny." Sun said rolling her eyes. "Come on. We'll dig that scanner out when we get back."

Castiel had a second to put it together- Claude was probably Claudia Debussy the department head- before Sun had taken off towards the doors. Castiel jogged after her wondering if every day would be like this.

He followed Sun down hallways and elevators. She didn't slow. He didn't know if that was because she was following some invisible path he couldn't see even with the notepad or if she just knew the way.

She stopped in front of a door and looked at him expectantly. He slowly turned his gaze towards the door and held the notepad up. The word _Archives_ glowed in silver and right below it was a call button. He pushed the button. Nothing happened. He glanced at the still closed door then back to Sun. Sun didn't seem to care that the door hadn't opened.

"You're going to see _the ghost_ soon, right?" Sun said with a pitying expression on her face.

"....the ghost." Castiel repeated. He highly doubted Sun meant a real ghost but as to what she actually meant he was at a loss. "I'm not sure I understand."

"The ghost in the machine." Sun said as if that explained exactly what she meant. Sun sighed. She gave him that pitying look again. "Meg."

"The AI?" Castiel asked.

Sun snorted out a harsh laugh. "Don't let her hear you call her that— or ghost for that matter."

"Noted." Castiel said. He knew that must have gone over poorly with it....her...Meg. But what was he supposed to call it?

"But you _do_ have an appointment with her?" Sun prompted. She reached out to where Castiel thought the call button was and pushed it half a dozen times.

"Yes. On the fifth of the week." Castiel said. The door still hadn't opened. Evidently waiting wasn't unique to New Eden. They waited another two minutes before Castiel hesitated to ask a question, "Why....shouldn't I call Meg an AI?" Castiel asked then thought to add. "Or a ghost?"

Sun cuffed his shoulder and laughed again then realized he hadn't meant it as a joke. He got another look of pity. She sighed with resignation. "You don't get out much, huh?"

"New Eden is....strict about travel and tourism." Castiel said. If by strict one meant draconian. "Meg is the first..." He waved his hand. He didn't know what to say if he shouldn't be saying AI. "That I've ever met."

Sun pursed her lips together then shrugged. "AI is like calling someone a pseud."

"And ghost?" Castiel asked.

"Meat sack." Sun said.

Castiel blinked in surprised. So he had unintentionally called his doctor a fake but his co-worker gladly called her the AI‒ what was he supposed to say?‒ equivalent of meat sack.

The door finally slid open. Sun put a hand on his back and guided him into the archives.

\---

Meg checked the time again as she wrote up her report. She had another hour before the newbie showed up for his first official appointment, assuming he wouldn't chicken out. She gave it fifty-fifty odds. The tone of his questions had gotten more and more serious as the week had gone on. She figured that he must be talking to Sun Yeshire. She had been that one agrestal that had thrown a fit when she realized the only doctor on the station was an intelligence.

She read her report over one last time before sending it to Crowley. There was a private vendor on floor six that was selling faulty implants and doing backroom surgeries. She had gotten three of his 'patients' in the last two days; victims better described it. The man was a hack. He hadn't even bothered with basic sterilization. All three victims had had the beginnings of what would have been a massive infection. He was lucky they had listened to their med-alert warnings as soon as they got them or there could have been some serious harm done.

And she thought life at Branch 8 was boring. Now she had a criminal wannabe doctor and a newbie to wire up that was probably talking to a two-faced ex-agrestal.

She attached a note to her report recommending that Crowley evict the fraudster before he killed someone one. She almost sent it like that but thought better of it. If it didn't affect the bottom line Crowley would let it slide. She added on that it would be bad for business if employees started suing Infinity Regressions for not properly vetting private vendors. She doubted anyone would actually attempt to sue IR. IR had so much dirt on most of their employees they could build a small planet.

She sent her report off then opened up her personal mail. She had two messages from Tom- he had gotten her job just four weeks after she had left- asking for help trying to figure out why the total nitrogen levels kept rising- particularly nitrates- without any apparent cause and seemingly random intervals. She wrote him back telling him either the entire population of Mariner Orbital had suddenly developed heart problems and wanted to treat it the old fashion way with nitrovasodilators or the Mollies's lab had another uncontained experiment. He could either do a station wide health survey or just tell the Mollies to knock it off.

The rest of her messages were from her father and Ruby, all of which were about how Mariner Orbital was in a fight with a company called Sandover over mining rights to a nearby asteroid. Her father's messages started out nearly vitriolic but someone at Sandover had apparently said the right thing because by the end of his last message her father seemed to think there was a possibility to work together. Ruby on the other hand started out skeptical and ended downright suspicious.

She sent them both a message back asking for less raging opinion and more information then told them about her newbie and fraud from floor six.

She started up the sterilization of the med-cubicle while she checked on her rejection project. Her newly crafted cells weren’t doing fine, they were doing _fantastic._ She had worked out the kinks from the cell line, whipped up a few different methods to prevent the rejection she had programed them for, and they were responding beautifully. She sent her preliminary data off to Niveus.

Right on time the newbie hit the buzzer on her door. She opened the door to her lab.

"I told you I wouldn't _chicken_ out." Castiel said sternly as he stepped inside.

Meg laughed silently, she had forgotten about that with all the other questions that Castiel had started asking.

But she _had_ done the search for chickens in New Eden right after he had left that first day. It turned out they _did_ have chickens which meant Castiel was just strange.

She closed the doors behind him. "Right. Big brave newbies never run off with their tails between their legs." Meg said. She turned on all the equipment in the med-cubicle. She had spent the night getting ready to start a full nervous system wiring and it barely all fit. She had just managed to squeeze in everything necessary. Despite those numerous petitions for more space, just barely was enough for Crowley.

Castiel marched through her lab. He didn't crane his head around to stare this time. He came to a stop in front of the closed door of the med-cubicle. "I don't really have that option."

She ran through her checklist one last time making sure everything was ready before she let Castiel in. She tossed him a sealable bag and a packaged gown. He barely turned as he caught the bag and package. He had damn good reflexes for someone who didn't have any physical upgrades. Whoever his parents had gone to, to select his genome had done a hell of a good job.

He stripped down and stuffed his things in the bag. He stood still while she spritzed him down again. He was tearing open the gown as soon as she was done. Meg held back a snicker. They were about to get a lot more intimate than seeing each other naked.

Castiel sat down on the table, then swung his legs up and laid back. He was just as tense as he was last time. She suspected Sun Yeshire was probably to blame for that.

"So, is there some tragic backstory why running isn't an option?" She asked. She knew going back to New Eden wasn't in the cards for him if that loyalty policy was anything to go by but there had to be somewhere other than IR Branch 8 that he could scamper away to.

"This is my only way to renounce my New Eden citizenship." Castiel said as she stuck the IV in him.

"What? Your renowned waterfalls weren't cutting it for you?" Meg said as she rearranged things around Castiel. During her search for chickens in New Eden she had browsed through their tourist info pages. There wasn't anything about Eden II, except for a few blurry maps Eden II didn't even appear to exist, but New Eden on the whole seemed to be big on two things: waterfalls and military tradition. She hadn't ever actually been to a planet before but if she ever did decide she wanted to take up planetary tourism the planets in New Eden would be at the bottom of her list and this poor newbie was born there.

Castiel huffed, darkly amused. "You read the tourist information page."

"I might have."

"Well, I highly doubt the tourist information page has changed much since I left." Castiel said. He looked up at the camera in the corner gravely. "It's rather lacking on information about what they do to deserters. Which I am until I renounce my citizenship."

"I take it what they do is not good things?" Meg said as she check the flow of the IV. It looked good. She pricked his skin and didn't get a response. A few more millilitres of analgesic and she could start.

"Yes. Not good things. To put it mildly." Castiel said in voice that should only be reserved for funerals. "Vaporization being one of the better things."

If that wasn't a mood killer Meg didn't know what was. They waited in silence after that. Five minutes later Meg pricked his skin again. He didn't flinch.

"I'm gonna start the nervous system integration." Meg told him. "Where do you want the plug?" It was a small external port just 1.5 centimetres in diameter. There were tons of places to hide it on an anthrogenic body to keep it safe but people almost always started out wanting it somewhere fashionable.

"Behind the ear." Castiel said. He pointed up to his left ear.

"Good choice." She said pleased. Behind the ear would keep it safe and clean. "I take it you read the pamphlet." She had begun to think he hadn't with all the questions he had asked her; that Sun Yeshire had scared him out of it.

"Yes. All of them." Castiel said. "They were very informative."

Meg made a pleased noise. _Finally,_ someone who had actually done their homework. The number of times she had sent IR employees home to read about the upgrades they wanted and they had _actually_ read the information was abysmally small.

She watched his heart beat faster every time the medical arm came near him. "Hey, don't worry. This isn't my first rodeo."

"I have to be awake for this." Castiel responded like he wasn't quite sure if he believed it or not but was definitely sure he didn't like the idea. "It said it in the pamphlet."

"Yep. Let's me know if I screwed something up so I can fix it before any real damage sets in." Meg said. He tensed on the table. She picked up a second IV line. She had been prepared for this. A lot of patients were anxious about the process. "You want some Mr. Feel Better?"

"...what?" Castiel asked bewildered.

"Our very best in generic brand anxiolytic." Meg explained. "It'll reduce anxiety but you won't get all goofy high on me. That's Ms. Feel Good's job."

She watched Castiel quietly weigh his options then nod silently. Meg set him up and waited for the tension to drain out of his body.

"Once I have the ear off and the nervous system filament started you can talk. Just don't move around." Meg told him. He tensed back up as soon as she mentioned his ear. She upped the dose of the anxiolytic.

He nodded again then held still. His eyes quickly closed when she came closer with the scalpel. Apparently he was squeamish about seeing his body parts not attached to himself. She had his ear off and the filament started in seconds. Her job might be boring a lot of the time but she was good at it.

"Alright." Meg said. "Nine hours of fun here we come."

He didn't talk for the first two hours which was fine by Meg. She chattered away about everything she had learned about chickens and told him the ins and outs of the station's social politics. Data didn't talk to archives, storage hated her, archives thought environmental control had it out for them, absolutely everyone avoided people from requisitions, but across the board nobody liked Crowley.

The conversation fell into a lull at the three hour mark. Castiel carefully filled the silence.

"What's a rodeo?" Castiel asked cautiously. "You said that before."

"What? They don't have cows and horses on Eden two?" She asked in mock horror.

"There are cows and horses on Eden two." Castiel said with a face too stern to be talking about cows. "But I don't see what that has to do with wiring up my nervous system."

"Well, it's your lucky day." Meg said as she taped off a filament and started working a new one in. "I happen to have six more hours to give you a history lesson. So don't move around too much and I'll tell you all about the joys of rodeo."

Castiel's eyebrows furrowed. Clearly he wasn't sure if that was a blessing or a punishment.

She was half an hour away from finishing the first session when Crowley showed up. She let him into her lab. Well, he let himself in with his rampant abuse of emergency procedures. He came up to the med-cubicle’s door. She frosted the glass so he couldn't watch. Hadn't he ever heard of patient privacy? He could just stand outside and steal things that he'd end up having to replace anyway.

The med-cubicle door clicked then slid open. He could override the med-cubicle door! Holy fiery burning hell! What did he think he was _doing!?_ She scrambled to cover up the hole she was making into Castiel's nervous system and threw a sterile blanket over the filament jar.

Crowley stepped into her sterile environment. She shoved one of the medical trays in front of him to stop him from coming in any further without being sprayed down.

" _Hold it."_ Meg said with absolute authority. Crowley might be the boss man but in her lab she was god. She spritzed Crowley down- making sure to get him in the eyes- and threw a gown in his face. "Put that on."

She really wished she could kick him out but if he could override the med-cubicle lock then he'd probably just come right back in and it wasn't as if anyone on the station would actually haul him out for her. This was the _mare liberum,_ he was the law. The best she could do was mitigate the problem.

He tore the bag open and pulled the gown on without complaint. He crowded in closer to the operating table taking up what was left of the little free space, "How's our favourite new employee?"

"Nearly done the first session and getting educated about the finer points of ancient animal husbandry." Meg said loftily. She started up an inventory program for the med-cubicle to see what Crowley was stealing this time. "And it would get done a lot faster if you weren't in here taking up space."

"Ah, I see Meg is imparting her vast wisdom upon you." Crowley said ignoring her not so passive-aggressive attempt to kick him out. He leaned over to look at Castiel's ear that she had slipped into an oxygen rich nutrient bath– everything a growing ear needed to get big and strong.

"Meg is quite knowledgeable." Castiel said keeping as still as he could and his face pointedly turned away from his dismembered ear.

"Well, Meg _is_ an intelligence." Crowley said. He narrowed his eyes at the equipment around Castiel as if he actually knew a damn thing about neuroprosthesis. "She can download more in an hour than you could read in a year."

"I'd still have to process it though." Meg said trying to ignore Crowley but it was hard when all she wanted to do was jab him with one of the scalpels. "Doesn't do much good to have the information and not understand any of it."

Crowley nodded, clearly not listening to her, then reached out to where the tiny bundle of filaments she had tagged and labelled were hidden under the sterile blanket; reached out like he was going to _touch_ them.

She snapped an instrument on the medical arm into his way. A displeased frown skittered across his face. He could be displeased all he wanted. _Nobody_ was going to touch the raw nerve filaments of one her patients but _her._

If he didn't get out of her lab soon she'd tell him she needed another sixty hours, be done in half the time, and bill him for the full lot. And maybe she'd stab him with one of the scalpels too.

"Hmm." Crowley nodded then wove his way around the equipment- she really _did_ need more space- to the other side to talk to Castiel. He made sure to stand just outside of her reach while she was stuck to the spot guarding Castiel and ignored her.

Meg kept an eye on him in case he started thinking about getting grabby again. And checked on her inventory program while he talked just to satisfy herself. She'd catch him in the act of stealing from her eventually. Not that she could do anything about it. What would she do if she actually did catch him in the act? Report him to himself? Everything in the lab belonged to him except for a few personal items of hers in the back. She kept the inventory program going. At least she'd get the satisfaction of knowing what he was taking.

When Crowley finally left she checked the inventory program again. She wasn't missing anything this time. Instead she found a bug. Now she was regretting not jabbing him with one of the scalpels. He was _bugging_ her lab. He already had access to the medical network and could override safety procedures on the med-cubicle door. It wasn't like he couldn't already watch her every move. The only place she had any privacy was in her office.

A rather horrifying thought occurred to her. What if she didn't have privacy in her office either? Crowley could bypass the lock on the med-cubicle. What if he could do it to her office too? She started up a program to sweep her office for bugs and set about gluing her office door shut with the Mollies's pink goo‒ officially called MR adhesive these days. It worked great as a medical adhesive, she figured it wouldn't be a half bad lock either.

She _really_ needed a new job.

She took the sterile blanket off her work and started feeding the filament into Castiel again. "Did HR ever inform you that he breached the privacy of your records?"

"I got a message earlier this week that _name classified_ had breached the privacy of my medical records." Castiel said. She could hear the frown in his voice. His heart beat a bit faster. "Why do you think it was Crowley?"

"Because he wanted to talk about your records." Meg said. She watched the anxiolytic levels carefully until his heart beat smoothed back out. "Which I didn't, by the way, I reported him. Not that it does any good."

"He does that often?" Castiel asked. "Invade the privacy of his employees?"

Meg laughed. "Oh boy, newbie, you got a thing or two to learn about IR." She finished off the last filament and wrapped it up for the day. She picked his ear up and positioned the plug properly before gluing it all down with the Mollies's goo, carefully not to let any of it bleed over. After the first appointment she could continue wiring up his nervous system without taking his ear off. He'd probably thank her for that later and he'd probably thank her for some advice too. "You might want to ditch the company notepad in the near future. That's probably how he did it."

Castiel nodded. He didn't seem particularly surprised.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Claudia Debussy - Is self aware that she shares a name with Claude Debussy the french impressionist composer.
> 
> Sun Yeshire - Her last name is entirely a joke. Yes. Hire. As in Yes, hire me. I’m sorry it’s a bad joke.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She put Castiel back together so he wasn't walking around with his nervous system hanging out and told him to hightail it out of her lab before she got any ideas about gluing his mouth shut.

 

"So it was a chicken and egg situation?" Meg asked. She was half way done the halfway point. It was week 10 of their 20 weeks of getting to know each other while Meg laced Castiel's body with the micro filaments that would let him become a real boy on the station.

"You could say that." Castiel said while keeping near perfectly still. It might be a generic brand of anxiolytic but it still did its job. Cas was as cool as the vacuum outside. "I wanted to leave that life behind but in order to do that I had to renounce my citizenship but in order to renounce my citizenship I had to leave."

"So you just snuck out of your own country without a plan and hoped it would work out?" Meg was still surprised. IR's Branch 8 was the last choice for most people but she hadn't met anyone before Castiel where it had _literally_ been his last chance.  

"Well, yes." Castiel said. Meg watched his muscles tense as if he was going to shrug. She paused. Castiel's muscles loosened. He'd obviously remembered the _no moving around while she was stitching up his nervous system_ rule. "I couldn't exactly research ways to defect while being monitored and I couldn't let myself be a participant in someone else's war yet again five years later." Castiel flexed his hand then relaxed it. "So I left."

Meg tied off the filament she had been threading then connected it to the main abdomen line, finishing it off. The rest of this session would be concentrating on his heart and lungs. She liked to add extra dedicated lines for those since anthrogenics were so damn fragile. If they didn't get so worked up about it she'd recommend they all get some kind of plate armour surgically implanted over their chests and backs. The smallest thing that broke through the skin could kill them if it found the right spot. She still didn't know how they didn't spend their whole lives as nervous wrecks. She had layers upon layers of protection around her brain and she was _still_ cagey about anyone being in the same room as it.

"What're you humming?" Castiel asked.

The machinery in the med-cubicle all stuttered. She hadn't realized she had been humming. She went back and checked out the audio feed for the med-cubicle and...yep. She had been humming.

"The Green Hills of Earth." Meg muttered embarrassed. It might be the cheesiest Earthsick song she had ever heard but it was catchy as hell. That was probably exactly why Ruby had sent it to her. As soon as she was done with Castiel for the day she was going to send the song back to Ruby with her musical rendition of Pi layered under it. See how she liked _that._

"I've never heard it that way before." Castiel said quietly.

"Oh fiery hell. Don't tell me there's a poppier version of it." Meg groaned but the com crackled with her laughter soon after. "No. Wait. _Do_ tell me there's a poppier version. I'll send it back home. Let _them_ all get stuck with a brainworm."

"No. I don't know a...a _poppier_ version." Castiel said. His eyebrows scrunched up in what Meg had learned was his deep contemplation look. "It's strange to hear it in a more cheerful manner. It's normally...." He breathed in slow and deep and started to sing Ruby's pop song as a dirge. "We pray for one last landing, on the globe that gave us worth. Let us rest our eyes in starry skies and the cool, green hills of Earth."

"That's...." Meg tried to come up with something to say but ended up making a noise that was mostly static. "....depressing."

Castiel snorted in wry amusement. "I think it's supposed to be when it's sung like that. I've only heard it at funerals."

Meg wondered how many funerals Castiel had been to in order to memorize the words. That quickly put a damper on the rest of their session.

She wired up Castiel's heart and lungs and sent him on his way with strict instructions to quit making pop songs into funeral marches. Castiel had bowed his head and said he hoped he wouldn't need to on Branch 8. She swore he was hell bent on making her feel goopy about his tragic backstory. His whole life read like a cliché action novel; the orphan that had met his military parents twice before they died in action then spent most of his adult life inside a battleship fighting incomprehensible wars for a cruel government.

Crap. Now she had to send a goopy message to her father saying how grateful she was that he hadn't moved their family to a place like New Eden.

She sent her nauseatingly sentimental message to her father then checked the rest of her mail.

Tom was still having problems with nitrogen levels and swore up and down that it wasn't from the Mollies's lab. Meg puzzled over the problem. It wasn't life threatening but it was unusual which usually meant some minor system was broken or leaking but from what Tom had sent her there was no good reason for the nitrogen levels to fluctuate like they were. Tom was adamant nothing was broken or leaking. Where in fiery hell was it coming from? She suggested he check out the sewage collection system and see if someone was doing an unregistered experiment with waste without properly ventilating. It was one of the few times she wished Mariner Orbital was as paranoid as Crowley. There'd be a security system so tight no one could sneeze out in public without someone knowing about it, let alone do some kind of secret project with sewage.

Ruby's message came as a shock. They had finally figured out why Sandover was fighting over mining rights out in the _mare liberum._ Mariner Orbital had claim on a handful of indium rich asteroids. Indium tin oxide was _still_ the best there was for touchscreens and Mariner Orbital had unknowingly been sitting on enough to make the entire population of Mariner Orbital rich. If they could keep Sandover from stealing it out from under their noses that was. Ruby ended off her message by asking what she wanted to do with her shares since she was still technically a Mariner citizen.

Meg read the message over twice before drawing up legal documents that would give Ruby power of attorney over her shares. She sent them off to Ruby. She honestly had no idea what to do with her shares. She didn't know what was going on back home and she couldn't _begin_ to imagine what she'd do with shares in an indium mining operation. All she knew was that if Mariner Orbital managed to kick Sandover out of their asteroid field she was quitting Infinity Regressions and setting up her own research lab back home.

\---

Sun passed him a small container of data chips. "Take those back and then we're done for the day."

Castiel took the container. He flipped it open and ran the scanner over the data chips. He counted the number of chips then closed the container. He checked his notepad‒ his non-company issue notepad‒ to see if the same number of data chips had scanned. The two numbers matched up. He wrote in the time and signed his name.

He grabbed his coat and pulled it on. He ignored several of his co-workers snickering behind his back. He knew they thought his coat was comical but it was the only thing he had left of his family. He wasn't about to let a handful of near strangers who probably didn't know anything about the history of his coat stop him from wearing it.

He slipped the container into his pocket and collected his notepad. He didn't need it to find his way around the station anymore but he had learned the hard way that if he left it at work someone would tamper with it. He still wasn't sure if it had been a failed joke or if someone was trying to spy on him. He erred on the side of caution and took it home with him each night.

He walked to archives and held his hand down over the buzzer on the door. He had memorized the location a week into his job and had found that keeping the call button on made those on the other side of the door more inclined to answer it instead of leaving him waiting for hours.

The door opened after two minutes. Castiel stepped inside. The first time he had come to archives he had been caught off guard by the gravity. It was kept at a significantly lower gravity than the rest of the station. Sun said the lower gravity and the lower temperature in archives helped to keep that data chips in working order. Castiel had simply nodded when she explained that. He didn't mention that it was also a good tactic to prevent an incursion. He had used it several times, luring an enemy into a low gravity field and attacking them while they were disoriented. He also didn't mention that archives appeared to be the only department that had double security doors and a slew of other features that were all designed to stop an attack.

He ambled towards the second set of doors. It was as fast as he could move in gravity this low; not low enough to float but high enough to fall in slow motion if he faltered. He reached the door and took a deep breath. He pressed his hand over a spot at chest height. Sun had explained that the door wouldn't open if his biometrics made it appear as though he was in distress or unconscious; a feature that would prevent someone from taking a hostage and using the door or an angry employee from gaining entry. Sun hadn't appeared to think that there was anything strange about it but it made Castiel wonder if Branch 8 had previously been attacked.

The door opened. He reached out, took hold of the sides of the doorway, and pulled himself inside. He landed softly; his jacket gently settling around his legs. He found himself staring across the room at Baen Gelae, quite possibly the most choleric person at Branch 8. The door closed behind him.

"It's almost the end of the day." Baen said from behind a wall of security glass. They pointed to the drop box. "Hurry up. We don't get paid overtime in archives."

Castiel knew the insinuation was that people from the data analysis department did get paid overtime but he'd yet to see the proof of that in his bank account. He opened the drop box and set the container down inside. He pushed the drop box closed. He took out his notepad while Baen retrieved the container and sent them the list of data chips that would be inside. It was the private accounts of two of Richard Roman Enterprise's banner companies, Kinetic Artillery and Sandover. Castiel hadn't asked how IR had come across the information but it was very likely illegal.

As far as he could tell his small section of the data analysis department appeared to be satisfying some private vendetta Crowley had against RRE. Castiel wasn't sure if it was abuse of company resources or if Crowley was paying for the analysis to be done. Either way from what his co-workers said it was a waste of time. Kinetic Artillery and Sandover had all their accounts in order.

"Took you longer than usual to get down here." Baen commented as they flicked their eyes over the data chips scanning each of them.

"Did it?" Castiel looked down at his notepad. He looked at the time he had logged the data chips leaving the data analysis department and the time he had arrived. It taken him an entire two minutes longer than usual.

"Make any _unprofessional_ stops?" Baen asked. It was their attempt at politely asking whether he had stopped and copied the data or swapped out data chips.

Castiel still wasn't used to the constant suspicion everyone seemed to be under at IR. "I put my coat on before leaving. Sun said we were done once I had dropped these off."

Baen glared out from behind the security glass. Castiel wondered what they could see when they looked at him. Did archives have higher security access? Were there biometric monitors in the room? Were they reading a company security profile about him?

Baen huffed at him. They sent over the confirmation that the data chips had been received. Castiel signed off on it and sent it to Sun.

"Don't be late next time." Baen grumbled then added a gruff. "Have a lovely evening."

Castiel wished them an equally lovely evening but from the roll of their eyes Castiel suspected they thought he had already ruined any chance at that. He made his slow way out of archives then headed for home.

His path home took him through floor six where most of the private vendors kept their stores. He slowed in front of a store that sold what the company provided free of charge. If he felt so inclined he could buy reels upon reels of the nervous system filament that Meg was threading through his body. He supposed there was some reason to be suspicious of some of the devices that IR provided for free but the nervous system filament were simply wires, albeit nanowires but still there wasn't anything to tamper with. Not like the notepad Crowley had provided to him.

He was about to move along when he caught sight of a small earpiece. It was the first time he had seen anything that was meant to be worn. He had just assumed that wearable technology wasn't built or sold in places that allowed someone to turn their body into a functional computer.

He hesitated in front of the window. The earpiece was a familiar bit of technology. He had used earpieces even smaller when sent out on missions by New Eden. What if they had eyewear? He'd still need to finish the cybernetic upgrade he had started to make sure New Eden wouldn't come after him but what if he could find the right tools that would let him see what everyone else saw in the meantime? They wouldn't be permanent but at least he wouldn't always be two steps behind everyone else; struggling to understand what they were looking at.

But Meg had warned him about a vendor on floor six. What if the other vendors were just as unreliable? Before he could think too much about it he strode inside. The vendor probably didn't even have what he was looking for.

He talked haltingly with the vendor who had a shaky grasp of Trade English and none of Standard Spanish. Castiel gathered that while this vendor didn't have what he was looking for there was a vendor several shops down who might have it.

Castiel thanked him and walked across floor six looking for a shop owned by a woman called Yi Qi. He messaged Meg asking if the woman was reliable while he looked for the shop. Despite not having a body Meg seemed to know a great deal about everyone on the station. The reply came quickly.

_I've never heard anything bad. Does this mean you're cancelling our next date?_

Castiel told her he'd still be meeting her on time. He simply wanted to explore some temporary options. Meg replied again.

_I don't mind sharing if you hit it off with Yi Qi._

Castiel read Meg's reply and chuckled. Over the span of the last eleven weeks they had developed something of a rapport.

He found the shop soon after. It was simply called, _Yi Qi's._

He went in to find a rather tall woman near the front organizing a series of small flat disks of paper thin metal that Castiel couldn't begin to fathom what they did.

"Do you sell _sansware?"_ Castiel asked. The word felt strange on his tongue. That was what the other vendor had called it. There wasn't a name in New Eden for it. The vast array of technology meant to be worn instead of implanted were simply everyday tools people used without thought.

"Depends on what you want." Yi Qi said. Well, he assumed the woman was Yi Qi. "And whether you're paying with company scrip or ISD."

"ISD." Castiel said. It was another strange aspect to Infinity Regressions. Employees' contractual wages were all paid with the standard UN recognized currency, Indium Standard Dollar, but any bonuses were paid with company scrip.

That satisfied Yi Qi. "What're you looking for?"

"Do you have...." Castiel knew what he wanted, a particular kind of eyewear, but he didn't know what to call them. They were _lvciftian ooanoan_ in Enochian. "Removable..." He gestured to his eyes. "...lenses?"

Yi Qi's eyes shot back and forth, reading something Castiel couldn't see. "No. But I can order some."

"How long?" Castiel asked.

Yi Qi's eyes started flicking again. "Thirty weeks."

Castiel shook his head and thanked her for her time. In another _nine_ weeks he'd have the same eye implants like everyone else. He sent a message to Meg telling her that sadly he'd be coming to their next date alone.

"Castiel."

Castiel startled in surprise as he stepped out of _Yi Qi's._ Crowley was standing in front of him. He hadn't seen the man since he had appeared at one of his appointments with Meg. "Sir."

"Please, just call me Crowley." Crowley said. He smiled as if he were letting Castiel in on a secret. "Investigating some alternative options?"

"No." Castiel said. "I was simply looking for something to make the transition easier."

Crowley's eyes shot down. "Upgraded from the company notepad I see."

Castiel looked down to the notepad in his hands. The notepad he had bought was, in fact, worse than the one the company had provided but considering that his options were processing power or privacy he had chosen privacy. He looked back up at Crowley. In New Eden he would have been reprimanded for not trusting what his superiors had given him but the culture of Branch 8 was....decidedly less formal. "It caught my eye."

Crowley's own eyes were busily darting back and forth. Castiel had the urge to hide the notepad behind his back. Could Crowley access his notepad remotely?

Crowley's eyes flicked back up. "How're you finding things? I hear your fashion sense has been all the talk of the analysis department."

"I'm finding things far more agreeable than I did in New Eden." Castiel said. It wasn't a very hard thing to accomplish even with the invasion of his privacy and the strangely excessive security. "And I wouldn't know about fashion."

"Clearly." Crowley said smirking. His eyes flicked back down to the notepad. Castiel turned to the side and put his body between the notepad and Crowley. Crowley gave him an insincere smile. "Well. This was a nice little chat but regrettably I'm rather busy. We'll be seeing each other around I'm sure." Crowley nodded his head and strode down the way Castiel had come from.

Castiel watched him go. Something about the encounter made his skin prickle with worried caution. Had Crowley done something to his notepad without even touching it? He looked down at the notepad in his hands. How secure was a notepad in a place that had the private financial accounts of competing companies?

\---

Meg let Castiel in; right on time as usual.

“Good morning Meg.” Castiel said as he stepped through the door.

“Mornin’ Castiel.” Meg said. She closed the doors behind him. "What? No Yi Qi?" She teased.

"Unfortunately no." Castiel said dryly. She watched him pick his way through her lab. The Castiel that was walking confidently past all the whirring machines now was a far cry from the nervous newbie that had stalked through her doors twelve weeks ago.

"Too expensive?" Meg asked. She waited for him to reach the door of the med-cubicle. She opened it up. He stepped inside. She was already tossing him a sealable bag and a gown.

He caught both and set them down on the table. "Too long." He started taking his coat off and carefully folding it to fit in the bag. "She said it would take thirty weeks to find what I wanted."

"Thirty weeks?" Meg said, disgusted. "What is she doing? Standing at the docking bay with a handwritten request on paper and trying to punt it to the manufacturer?"

Castiel glanced up at the camera. There was a hint of an amused smile. "I doubt someone in Branch Eight would deign so low as to physically write out a request on something as uncouth as _paper."_

"It can joke!" Meg flickered the lights playfully. "But you're right. It would probably be a triple password protected file with the request written in code that would take twenty nine weeks to crack." She spritzed him down once he finished undressing. "And one week to manufacture and ship."

Castiel huffed out a quiet laugh as he pulled the gown on and settled onto her table. "There _are_ a rather large number of... _misgivings_ about privacy on the station."

"I think you mean paranoia." Meg said. Somewhere along the way she had grown used to the paranoia that ran rampant in Branch 8. From what she could tell it was the cost of doing business when that business was corporate spying.

She made the mistake of asking Castiel about that daring cover story he had hinted at last week and got an earful of the most boring thesis she could have imagined for the next eight hours. She was repaid for her patience by being made fun of for having lived on a modified Stanford torus.

Castiel's eyebrows knitted together. "You're serious. It... _spins._ That's how your home orbital produced gravity?"

"What's wrong with a bit of spin?" Meg groused. So what if Mariner Orbital was one of a five human-made structures left that still relied on centripetal acceleration to make gravity? There were these little ol' things out there that she liked to call _moons_ that did the same damn thing.

"Nothing." Castiel said too seriously. "If you don't mind a bit of kinetosis." His eyebrow twitched, his heart beat a bit faster, and Meg caught on that she was being ribbed. Castiel pressed his lips together fighting back another one of those amused smiles. "Is Mariner Orbital a heritage site?"

"Ha ha. Meg lived in a museum. Like I never heard that before." Meg said sarcastically. She wasn't really offended. She could tell he was joking- despite the poker face- and it was only fair after she had poked fun at how boring his cover story was. Not to mention that Mariner Orbital _could_ qualify as a historical site if it joined the UN but she wasn't about to add fuel to the fire. Meg scoffed. "You lived on a _planet._ You had _seasons._ And don’t even get me started on air quality Castiel. You won’t win.”

That was all it took to make the last hour of the appointment fill up with increasingly dry banter; it reminded her of Ruby and home. The newbie was alright when he wasn't being awkwardly formal or utterly tragic.

She put Castiel back together so he wasn't walking around with his nervous system hanging out and told him to hightail it out of her lab before she got any ideas about gluing his mouth shut.

She checked her messages once she was alone. There weren't any responses from home to her messages from last week but she had expected that. It would take a while for her messages to get there and then they had to read, write, and reply but she _had_ been expecting another update on what was happening with Sandover.

She re-read her messages from last week and worried. What if Sandover was pulling some kind of shady corporate takeover? She heard about the kind of things IR got up to. It didn't seem far-fetched that another company might be just as unscrupulous.

She closed the old messages, disgusted with herself. The paranoia on Branch 8 was getting to her. Sandover wasn't going to try and take over Mariner Orbital. There was probably a faulty communications hub somewhere along the line slowing everything down.

She checked on her only new message. It was from Niveus. They were impressed by her preliminary data on the rejection problem. They wanted her to test it on a particular genome- instructions attached- and send the results back asap. She opened up the attachment and looked it over. It was the strangest genome she'd ever seen. It looked remotely anthrogenic but there were gaps and additions that didn't make sense. It was probably just more corporate paranoia. Niveus was probably worried she'd try to sell out the patient.

She turned on her equipment and got to work.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Green Hills of Earth is by Robert Heinlein. Castiel is singing a slightly altered version to the tune of a slower version of the Marines' Hymn. Meg was humming it in its original form to the tune of Radioactive Mama by Sheldon Allman. The actual lines are "We pray for one last landing, on the globe that gave us birth. Let us rest our eyes on fleecy skies and the cool, green hills of Earth."
> 
> Baen Gelae is named for the genus: Gelae species: baen literally Gelae baen. Say that out loud.....are you laughing yet? Because that is legitimately a type of beetle. Its fellow species are Gelae rol, Gelae fish, Gelae balae, and Gelae donut. You have Kelly B. Miller and Quentin D. Wheeler to thank for these hilariously named beetles.
> 
> Yi Qi is actually a dinosaur. Okay. Not the woman in the chapter but her name is the shortest name of any dinosaur. This would be a way cooler fic if Yi Qi was a dinosaur that owned a store on a space station.
> 
> Sansware is a play on hardware/software. It’s technology for people without the desire/ability/etc to be cyborgs.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Newbie!"
> 
> Castiel sighed. Newbie. Sun had told him he'd be newbie until someone else new arrived at Branch 8 no matter how long it took. The only person who ever used his name was Meg; though even she had a tendency to call him Newbie. He turned around expecting someone from his department running after him to take back more data chips but was instead met with the sight of a huge black spider-esque machine; limbs slithering out every which way as it gamboled towards him.

 

Five weeks of wracking her brain for an answer and then coming up with something she thought might not even work on a full body scale had left her thinking the worst. What if Niveus tested out her solution and it didn't just fail but _killed_ whoever the mystery patient was? So when she got a message from Niveus a few weeks later offering her a raise, a permanent job, and funding to buy or build her own lab wherever she wanted she was floored.

It took her two days to believe the message was real and then two minutes to message them back saying she was quitting her current job in a week and ask them if there were any recommendations for what she should include in her lab. She sent the message off then wrote up two more. The first one telling Crowley to get bent- _politely_ \- because she was quitting. The second one was a request to Storage. She needed her proxy sent up because if there was ever a time to celebrate now was that time.

Storage management sent her a message back a few minutes later. They'd have her proxy vessel sent to her lab an hour after her work day.

She got the last of her projects for the day shut down then whipped up a partial of herself.

Two employees from Storage dropped her proxy off an hour and a half later. She linked up with the proxy and started picking her way through her lab. It took her nearly half an hour to get it from one end of her lab to the other without knocking anything over. Crowley _still_ hadn't given her more space.

If she hadn't kept her childhood proxy, a huge vaguely octopus-shaped monstrosity with more eyes than strictly necessary, she wouldn't be in this predicament. If she had built herself something sleek and boring and fashionably _adult_ her proxy would have been small enough to be stored in the lab. She wouldn't need to waste half an hour trying to move it around and she wouldn't have to rely on Storage to haul it out for her every time. But she wasn't a sleek and boring kind of gal and eight limbs (well, seven limbs. She had never gotten around to fixing that one missing limb) were a lot more useful than four. Plus, watching Ruby turn her nose up at them had never gotten old.

When she finally wedged her proxy into her office she sealed the door. She swept the room for any of Crowley's little _gifts_ and found nothing. She opened up the vault where she kept her brain and hooked the proxy up. She started up the download of her partial then withdrew from the proxy.

Half a minute later her proxy was up and moving out of the lab. She opened the lab doors and let herself out. Fiery hell, she wished she could link up to her proxy anywhere in the station and actually go out as herself instead of just a partial copy. She was stuck in her lab while part of herself got to go blow off steam.

She tried not to think about what she could be getting up to out in the station. She did her best to keep herself busy. She fawned over her rejection project and cooed sweet nothings to her lumps of cells. Those babies had gotten her a ticket of this junk heap. She was moving on to bigger and better things. Hell, she might even be famous if she could work out a universal solution for the rejection problem.

She sent off another message to Ruby- she still hadn't heard back from her yet- telling her all about how she'd still pretend to be her friend when she went down in the history books and Ruby was still crunching numbers for other people's research.

\---

"Try some."

Castiel looked at the lump of vaguely cheese-appearing food Sun was offering him. He wasn't a stranger to meal alternatives. New Eden didn't feed its citizens anything except meal alternatives during required service periods but they didn't have the audacity to try to make it appear that it was real food. New Eden didn't see the need to lie about it, everyone knew what it was, but at least they were completely odourless and tasteless.

This yellowish lump on the other hand smelled _somewhat_ similar to cheese.

"Alright." He took the offered lump. He cautiously put it in his mouth. Sun watched him. He pressed his tongue to it. It didn't taste like cheese but he could believe it was distantly related. "It's very good."

"I make it myself." Sun stated proudly. She offered him a second lump. "I make my own meat too."

Castiel took it. It didn't smell like anything he could describe. He placed the lump in his mouth and almost immediately regretted it. He did his best to keep his face passive. The data analysis department didn't get along well with any other department so if he made enemies here he'd fast become an outcast.

"It's kangaroo." Sun said watching him far more intently than she usually did. Apparently whatever she normally paid attention to while she talked to him was far less interesting than his reaction. "I've been experimenting with some algae additives that give it a better texture."

Castiel had never _heard_ of a kangaroo before but he doubted it actually tasted like.... the indescribable horror taking place on his taste buds. He was starting to see the practical benefits of getting wired. If the process had been completed by now he could have turned the sensation off, swallowed it, and nodded politely. If only Sun had waited until next week to try and poison him with fake kangaroo; tomorrow was his last appointment with Meg.

Instead he was forced to nod politely and excuse himself to the bathroom and spit it out before he threw it up. He hoped Sun didn't catch on.

The department manager caught him on the way out of the bathroom and gave him a box of data chips.

"Take those back." Claude told him.

Castiel nodded thankfully; now he could escape whatever else Sun had in her lunch.

Claude stopped and stared at a point just in front of him. Her eyes flicked over it. "And there's six more there for you to pick up when you get there."

Sun came up beside him and stared at the invisible spot Claude was inspecting. "What did Richard Roman Enterprises do to get the UNP involved in a corporate affair?"

Claude pointed to a spot in the air in front of him. Sun made a surprised noise. Castiel wished he had thought to bring his notepad along to the bathroom. At least he only had to put up with everyone around him interacting with thin air for a few more days, then he'd be able to see what they saw.

"We should pull the Niveus files too." Sun said. She jabbed her finger at three separate spots and flicked it up and down. "That's a lot of chatter between Kinetic Artillery and a charity."

Claude shook her head. "Not really." She pointed to a different patch of air.

"Huh." Sun said. "Good set up."

Claude looked off to her right. She huffed and rolled her eyes. She looked to Castiel. "Archives is going to be upset when you get there but don't leave without the full order."

Castiel nodded. "I'll make sure of it." He took the box of data chips to his desk. He pulled his coat on before he started to check off the data chips. Baen had reported him twice since that first incident for taking too long.

He double-checked the names and signed off on their departure time. He hurried out the door. It still struck him as strange that a company like Infinity Regressions relied on _manually_ retrieving data from their archive but he could appreciate the security factor. If the data wasn't on the network it was impossible for someone to steal it without first breaking into Archives.

He was halfway to Archives when a voice called out to him.

"Newbie!"

Castiel sighed. _Newbie._ Sun had told him he'd be newbie until someone else new arrived at Branch 8 no matter how long it took. The only person who ever used his name was Meg; though even she had a tendency to call him Newbie. He turned around expecting someone from his department running after him to take back more data chips but was instead met with the sight of a huge black spider-esque machine; limbs slithering out every which way as it gamboled towards him.

His hand went to his thigh, instinctively looking for a weapon. There was none there of course. He had left behind New Eden and its weapons. He pressed his hand flat to his thigh and waited for the nightmarish machine to attack. He tried to gauge what would be better to attack bare handed; the body and what was probably the head or the legs? The legs looked dangerous but the body was likely where the controls were housed.   

It stopped in front of him and laughed. The laugh was familiar which was absurd. He'd _know_ if he had met a walking nightmare before.

It sidled up to him, lowering itself down from two metres to almost eye level. Maybe that was eye level for the machine. It skittered closer. Castiel took a step back. It laughed again. "Nice to know my curves make people speechless."

Castiel blinked in surprise as he placed the voice. " _.... **Meg**?"  _

"The one and only." It waved three of its limbs dramatically. "Well, except for the me back in the lab."

Castiel squinted at it....at Meg? He had started reading about intelligences since he was allowing one to delve into his nervous system. If this was Meg she was using a proxy but it couldn't be Meg because Branch 8 didn't allow for real time wireless links outside of a department. Unless... "Are you a partial?"

"I'm not gonna stick my whole brain in this heap unless I have to." Meg affirmed. One black limb snaked out and wrapped around his shoulders. Castiel tensed and fought back a shiver. It ushered him along and kept them walking. "You know what they say about eggs in baskets."

Castiel looked up at what he thought was supposed to be the main set of eyes. At least, he thought they were eyes. They were round and roughly symmetrical and set above a double row of small circular bumps that wrapped around what might be the head. "Have you ever actually seen a chicken before?"

"No. Why?" Meg asked. He could hear the smile in her voice but the mechanic monstrosity simply flickered a set of lights near the top of its probable head.

"For someone that hasn't seen a chicken you're very fond of chicken proverbs." Castiel said. He eased out from under the limb around his shoulders. It might be Meg- or part of her at least- but her proxy was unnerving.

"So what do you do for fun around here?" Meg asked flailing three limbs again.

"Catalogue reports." Castiel said dryly. He held up the box of data chips he was returning to archives. "Or bring things back to the archives. I'm headed there right now actually."

"Fiery hell." Meg swore. "And I thought my job was boring." She chopped at the air in front of them with a snake-like limb. "Well don't let me keep you from all that fun."

"I can walk and talk." Castiel assured her. He would just have to be careful not to take too long or else he'd risk the wrath of Baen again.

"Good to know you can multitask with the best of us." Meg joked. She took two steps for Castiel's five then swung around suddenly. The proxy loomed forward and seemed to leer in the direction of a group of people Castiel recognized from accounting. They scattered under her gaze. Meg chuckled. "You know, I was thinking about building a proxy a bit more _local flavour_ but the reaction videos I get out of this might just be a good enough argument to keep this one."

"You can build something less....." Castiel's eyes flicked over her proxy; the odd angles, the slithering limbs. There were all sorts of sharp lines and circular bumps on the round body that looked as though they might be disguising hidden compartments.

"Eldritch horror from the hidden depths?" Meg said, sickly sweet.

"Flamboyant." Castiel suggested. "In the gothic sense."

The lights flashed again. "I like that Cas." Meg fell back into step beside him. "Next time Crowley starts making his _comments_ on it I'll tell him this proxy is fine art."

Castiel nodded. He wasn't sure what to do. Was Meg following him as his doctor or as an acquaintance? He had never seen her outside of her lab. In all honesty he had begun to think of her as her lab. Now she was walking alongside him in a proxy that looked as though it had crawled out from under a child's bed in the dark of night.

Meg's proxy leaned closer as if she were inspecting his coat. "You know I used to work in environmental control. Station Eight isn't exactly a luxury liner but it does keep its temperature at a balmy two ninety seven. It's not exactly chilly in here." Meg's proxy rattled in a mock shiver. She darted a limb out and gently tugged at the sleeve of his coat. "Or are you just big into classical detectives?"

Castiel glanced up at her confused. That only served to confuse him more. Where did he look? Was that double line of circular bumps near the top the equivalent of a face? He looked back down to his coat, which was decidedly easier to understand. "Classical detectives?"

"You know, Rick Deckard, Elijah Baley." She said as if that meant something.

He shook his head. "I don't understand." What did _'classical detectives'_ have to do with his coat?

"The detective coat." She tugged at the sleeve of his coat again.

"Detective coat." Castiel repeated. He looked back down at his coat then up at Meg. She thought this was a detective's coat? "This is a _trench_ coat."

"Whatever you want to call it. It's still a little bit over the top for a station." Meg said. She followed him around the corner to the archives. The lights at the top of the proxy flickered again. "Or did someone tell you they make it rain for the holidays?"

"This is not a _detective coat."_ Castiel said. He stopped outside the door to the archives and pressed the buzzer. "It's a replica from earth military history. It's based off the research I was doing."

"Oh." Meg said. There was a hint of empathetic sadness to her voice that was at odds with the understated horror that was her proxy. She flickered the lights at the top of her proxy. "So do you all wear replica uniforms back home?"

"No." Castiel said coolly. "It was a gift from my sister."

"So she's the fashionable one." Meg said brightly.

Castiel kept his eyes on the door. She couldn't know what the coat meant to him; a final gift from his family. He knew she wasn't mocking it the way others on the station had but it picked at still healing wounds. "Why are you here?"

"Got a job offer." Meg said. She took half a step back. The limbs all retreated and coiled up close to the body of the proxy. "Decided I'd go out on the town one last time to celebrate. When I get you wired up at the end of the week I'm taking off for greener pastures."

"Congratulations." Castiel said icily polite. The door to the archives swung open. "Excuse me." He said as he stepped inside. The door snapped shut behind him. When he came back out she was gone.

\---

Meg read over the garbled messages again. She had finally gotten her replies from home but they were an incomprehensible mess. Whatever fix had been put in place to get that piece of crap communications hub back online was utterly useless. Her father's message looked like someone had replaced it with _lorem ipsum,_ Ruby's message was just a bunch of smeared lines, and maybe one in twenty words from Tom's message had made it through to form one long incoherent sentence.

From what she _could_ read of Tom's message she thought he might have finally figured out where the excess nitrogen was coming from, but who knew. Maybe he hadn't and everyone was turning blue with methemoglobinemia.

At least the problem was a hub closer to home and not affecting anything she was getting from Niveus. Now _that_ would have made her kick up a fuss even though she was two days away from leaving.

She didn't bother to reply to anything. It would probably come out just as mangled on their end as it had hers. Besides at this rate she'd probably beat her message home.

She double checked everything for Castiel's last appointment. All he needed was the neuro implant and he'd be online and functioning. Once she got that done she was closing up shop and packing her things. No way was she missing the first ship out of IR.

An urgent message from Crowley popped up in her inbox. She wanted to say she couldn't believe he was still pulling that crap on her when she was two days from leaving but then she might as well say she didn't believe in gravity either. She debated on not bothering to open the message. It was probably something asinine like _remember to turn out the lights._

....but it _could_ actually be an emergency. Her favourite newbie had been an urgent message. She opened it up and read the message. She was ready to throw things by the time she was done reading it. Crowley had sent an urgent message to say he was dropping by for an official farewell. How did _that_ merit being marked urgent?

Crowley walked into her lab unannounced, as if he had been waiting for her to read the message. "Congratulations on the new job." Crowley said not directing his words to any particular place in the lab.

"Thanks." Meg said suspiciously. She was sure Crowley was pissed that she had turned in her resignation on short notice but he had been his usual self all week, skeevy and unpleasant.

"While we'll all be sad to see you leave Infinity Regressions we hope you find your new job fulfilling." Crowley said. It sounded like he had rehearsed that line in the mirror a few dozen times and he _still_ couldn't get the sneer out of his voice.

Meg thanked him again and tried to think up a polite version of, _now get the hell out._

"Well. Our time together _appears_ to have come to an end." Crowley said.

Meg watched him closely. What the hell did _appears_ mean? Did he think he could buy her off with some crappy pay raise in company scrip? He had another thing coming if that's what he thought.  

Crowley turned on his heel and started towards the doors. He stopped just in front of them. "Oh, I nearly forgot. Your storage unit was broken into. Your proxy was stolen."

Every camera Meg had whipped around to watch the doors snap shut behind Crowley. Her proxy had been stolen. Someone had stolen her legs. A second urgent message popped up in her inbox. This one was from Storage. It started off with, _We're regretfully sorry_ and might as well have ended with _enjoy your extended stay in prison._

She sent back a furious message to Storage telling them that they had better be getting the hell on trying to find out who had broken into her storage unit because she had a ship to catch in two days! There was no chance in fiery hell that she was _trusting_ someone from Infinity Regressions to take her brain onboard a ship like _cargo._

\---

Castiel walked over to B A N early in the morning on the fifth day of the week and waited to be let in. The doors opened but Meg didn't greet him. It was eerily quiet as he walked through the lab. Normally there was a myriad of machines busily whirring away but today it was silent.

He knew Meg had said she was leaving soon after his last appointment but he hadn't put much thought into what that would mean. He paused halfway to the med-cubicle and peered at his quiet surroundings. It was as if Meg had already left. He wondered if her successor would manage to fill the lab with their presence the way Meg did.

He made his way to the med-cubicle. It was far easier than it had ever been. There was nothing blocking his way or being pushed across his path. The med-cubicle door opened. Meg was still silent. He stepped inside. The door closed behind him. There was still no response from Meg.

"Meg?"

The medical arm tossed him a sealable bag and a gown. He caught them and looked around trying to decide where best to direct his attention. What if she had turned most of the cameras off in preparation of leaving?

"You just gonna stand there all day?" Meg asked.

Castiel felt a shadow of a frown slip across his face as he stared at the medical arm. Meg didn't say anything else. He started stripping off his clothes and stuffing them into the bag. "Did I do something?"

"No." Meg said.

"Do you-" Castiel stopped. He still wasn't certain what was appropriate between them. Were they friends? Co-workers? Doctor and patient? He shook his head. "Never mind."

"What?" Meg asked.

Castiel sealed the bag and set it aside. "Do you want to talk about it?"

Meg laughed darkly. "Testing out your robopsychology?"

"What?"

"The classics, newbie." Meg said somehow managing to sound exhausted despite her lack of a need to sleep. "Read them."

Castiel waited for her to say something else but she stayed silent. He lay down on the table. Meg put the IV in. Castiel kept as still and quiet as he could. Maybe she had taken offense when he had been rather cold with her about her questions about his coat.

"I've been getting ready to head out to that new job." Meg suddenly said.

Castiel stared up at the ceiling puzzled. "Isn't that _good?"_

"It should be; finally get out of this shithole." Meg said gruffly. "But my proxy was stolen." Her voice went flat and emotionless. "I can't leave unless Security finds it, I build or buy a new one, or let someone carry me out." She tapped the medical arm to the table. "And I don't trust anyone here as far as I could throw them without a proxy."

Castiel was shocked. He had never heard of any employee's belongings being stolen and stealing an intelligence's proxy was akin to body snatching. Why wasn't there _any_ statement issued about thieves on the station? "Did you report it to Crowley?"

"Who do you think told me it was gone?" Meg said sharply. She pricked his skin. He didn't flinch. She moved in with the medical arm. "Alright. Don't move and don't talk." She taped his eyelids open. The medical arm reached over. A moment later a laser and a small jar filled his vision. "Don't look around so much. This is the tricky part."

The procedure didn't take as long as he thought it would but it _had_ turned out to be as nerve wracking as he thought it'd be. Watching as Meg turned the laser on and sliced open his own eye was enough to make the most battle hardened soldier flinch‒ which he did. Meg had to wait for him to summon up the courage to stay still.

Four hours later his vision flashed blue and a blurry _welcome_ was splashed across the world in front of him. It was like using the removable lenses New Eden would provide when a citizen was actively serving but he'd never have to give these ones back.

"You can talk now." Meg said curtly.

"It's blurry." Castiel said worried. He tried to focus his eyes on the blurred letters but they wouldn't sharpen. He frowned at the fuzzy _welcome_. What if it hadn't worked? He knew how to use the removable lenses. This couldn't be that different.

"It'll be blurry for the first day or two while your brain and the implant figure out how to talk to each other." Meg said. She held up a small instrument and asked him to blink twice. The _welcome_ disappeared. She asked him to blink twice more. The _welcome_ reappeared. "Looks good." She set the instrument down. "The pamphlets I gave you earlier will explain how to set up your user profile. If things don't sharpen up by the time you return to work next week, make another appointment."

She went quiet again.

He blinked twice to turn off the computer now nestled in his brain and dressed quietly. "Thank you, Meg."

"No problem, newbie." Meg said but it wasn't her usual teasing tone.

"I'm sorry about your proxy." Castiel said. "If there's anything I can—"

The door to the med-cubicle opened. Castiel was sure that if Meg was wearing a body at the moment she'd be pointing silently at the door waiting for him to leave.

He folded his jacket up in his arms and stepped out of the med-cubicle. The lab was dead silent. The lights turned off behind him as he walked to the exit. The doors snapped open when he reached them; the sharp _skhit!_ the only sound in the lab. He stepped out into the hallway. He turned around to say one last _thank you_ to Meg and try to offer his help again but the doors snapped shut in his face. It reminded him all too well of that first day he had come to Branch 8.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lorem ipsum: filler text used in printing.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The orange light in the corner of the lab started to flash. An emergency alert flashed in her inbox. She hit the emergency stop and pulled up the alert. She might resent being stuck in Branch 8 until the rest of the parts came in for her new proxy but she wasn't going to put someone's life at risk just because she was pissed at Crowley.

 

A small blue light pulsed in the corner of his vision. Four weeks later and it still took him the better part of an hour to open his mailbox. Meg had told him, in three very formal messages, that some people developed new neural pathways faster than others. Evidently his use of removable lenses didn't help speed the progress along.

He made a pleased noise that echoed in his still next to empty apartment when he finally opened his mailbox. There was only one message; a reminder from Claude. He was being sent to a nearby moon to pick up _delicate information_ and his ship, the _Itzpapalotl_ , would be leaving in two hours. His frustrations with his mailbox meant he had only one hour left but that was more than enough time. This wasn't New Eden. He didn't have to register a travel plan or report every item he intended on bringing. He could put a change of clothes into a bag and be ready in ten minutes.

It was exactly what he did. He was at the dock before his ship arrived.

He hadn't been back to the dock since he first arrived. He had memories of a clean open space with blank walls between gates. With his upgrades he was barraged with information. Advertisements slid over the walls: there were flight schedules and sometimes cargo lists beside each gate, there were post-it notes littered throughout, and the Infinity Regressions logo pulsed and turned in the middle of the space.

It took him longer to select the flight schedules as the only visible layer than it had for him to pack for the two day trip.

He skimmed over the information at each gate looking for the name _Itzpapalotl_. He found it at gate six. He frowned at the tiny diagram spinning in the air below the ship's name. It was smooth and curved, built for atmosphere and space, but there were lines and bumps that hinted at the ship being more than just a transport vehicle. He recognized it for what it was; the _Itzpapalotl_ was a fighter ship. Why was a warship being sent to pick up data?

He flinched when the gate flashed green. The _Itzpapalotl_ had arrived.

No one came out of the gate to meet him. After a few minutes of waiting he decided to board on his own. The ship's airlock was open. There was no one to meet him there either. He crossed the airlock and leaned into the ship. Instead of a loading bay the airlock looked into a long hallway covered in rows of seats and lockers. He breathed deep. The ship had that distinctive smell of people living in close quarters and the supplies to maintain weapons.

"I'm really hoping you're Nimshi Castiel because I don't have time to run around looking for him."

Castiel jerked his head around to find a shorter man standing to his side, hidden between two lockers. "Yes. Though Castiel is fine." Castiel said. He stepped into the ship. The other man wasn't hiding between lockers but rather, leaning in a very narrow doorway.

"Great." The other man smiled and reached out to slap him on the shoulder. "I'm Gabe. I'll be your _acallachiani_ today."

Castiel silently cursed his newly acquired auto translate. Much of the time it worked flawlessly, he was always astonished by how easy it often made communicating, but sometimes there would be a word that it assumed had no need for translation. The auto translate claimed _acallachiani_ was Spanish but he was more than sure it wasn't. He spoke near perfect UN Standard Spanish and that was not Spanish.

The auto translate's assumptions had led to a number of social blunders in the first weeks that he had used the program. It had taken him a week to understand that _acalquixtimeh_ meant docked ships which wasn't much of an issue but it had taken another week for him to understand what todos los _acalquixtimeh_ meant: socially unacceptable promiscuity. That was why everyone avoided one of the senior analysts in the department, he slept around in a way that wasn't acceptable for the department. Castiel had naively asked what was wrong with his apartment that he was sleeping in ships at the dock.

He hoped that acallachiani wouldn't turn out to be another idiom lost in translation and that he wasn't about to agree to something unpleasant.

Gabe looked him up and down. He went over to a locker and pulled out a jacket. He tossed it at Castiel. "You'll want to borrow that when you meet our tipster." He started walking down the long hall. He waved over his shoulder for Castiel to follow. "Come on, the common room is this way and the passenger room isn't far from there."

Castiel held the jacket out. He had worn something similar while serving in New Eden. It was light body armour. It would confuse the guidance system of most bullets and offered limited protection against shrapnel. He stayed where he was. He hadn't signed up to fight someone else's battles and this was beginning to look suspiciously like he had been assigned to do just that. Why else would he be given body armour and have a fighter ship to bring him to the location?

Gabe came back down the hall. "I know you data pushers like to worry but seriously, _don't."_ He fixed Castiel with a steady look. "I've flown this trip a few dozen times now. The wrong kind of pirates see the _Itzpapalotl_ and take off. They all know they're no match for her."

Castiel studied his face trying to find a lie. As far as he could tell Gabe genuinely thought he was worried about pirates and not about being drafted into someone else's battles. He held up the armoured jacket. "Why do I need the jacket?"

Gabe laughed. "Even when they're the _right_ pirates they're still _pirates._ If you data pushers weren't liable to shoot yourselves in the foot I'd give you a gun too." He started back down the hall. "But it's mostly a precaution. Sometimes even the right pirates shoot each other. Don't want to get caught up in that, right?"

Castiel looked over his shoulder at the airlock then back down the hall at Gabe. He breathed deep and followed Gabe inside.

Gabe showed him the common and his room during his two day stay and then told him that everywhere else was out of bounds. Castiel didn't mind at all. He was more than happy that Gabe didn't treat him like a soldier.

He spent a quiet day in the common room before the ship arrived at the moon. He considered asking Gabe for a gun but Gabe assured him that none of the other data analysis specialists had ever actually been _intentionally_ shot at.

Castiel folded up his trench coat and set it aside. He pulled on the jacket Gabe had given him and walked out into what he hoped wasn't going to be a team of armed pirates waiting to kill him.

The dock turned out to be a cavern retrofitted to be airtight. There was nothing in it. It was just four gates leading to a large empty cavern of simple rough cut rock with the occasional light bolted to the walls or ceiling.

He heard voices from the gate across from him. He was soon met with a team of armed pirates but they weren't there to kill him. They were there for a money transfer.

He set up the transfer through Branch 8. They thanked him and passed over a data chip. He went back aboard. There was no fighting, no threats. It was a simple business deal.

Gabe met him at the airlock. "Any pirate coups go down?"

"No." Castiel said surprised. "They were actually rather polite."

"They usually are until they're shooting at each other." Gabe chuckled. His smile dropped. His eyes flicked back and forth. He rolled his eyes at what he must be looking at. "Looks like we've got a couple more coming in. Crowley wants us to stay and see what they have."

As soon as Gabe stopped talking that small blue light pulsed in the corner of his vision. He sighed and started the tedious process of trying to open his inbox.

He got it open and managed to read through Crowley's directions only a few minutes before the next informant landed. His instructions were to buy anything they offered, partly because sometimes informants didn't know what they had and partly because some of them were dangerous to refuse.

The next informant to land was an intelligence who declared that they _didn't talk to meat sacks pretending to be human_ and promptly left without offering what they had come to sell. Another ship landed soon after, the crew had a basket full of _misplaced_ recording devices. Castiel paid them and thanked them and then retreated to the ship as the crew of the new ship decided to take issue with the crew of the pirate ship.

Gabe closed up the airlock and waited for the fighting to finish. When it was over the new ship had left and the pirate crew lay dead. Gabe grinned and promptly left to scavenge the pirate ship. That would have been incredibly illegal in New Eden but Castiel wasn't sure if _any_ laws applied to the moon he was currently on.

Castiel wondered if the fight would stop the next two informants from coming and what he was supposed to say about the bodies. He was debating on dragging the bodies aside when the next two ships landed, one after the other.

A single woman came out of the first ship but a group of four came out of the second. They stared across from each other. They looked at the bodies. They all turned to Castiel. Castiel tensed. What if they thought _he_ had killed the pirate crew for the data chip?

Gabe came swaggering down the gate from the pirate ship. He had something bundled up in his arms. He slowed when he saw the new people in the cavernous dock. "There were some political disagreements between our last two clients." Gabe said. He jut his chin at the dead pirates. "They left behind some cool swag if you want to take a go."

The crews of the other two ships nodded. The single woman called back down the gate. Two more women came bounding down the gate with torches and trolleys in hand.

The woman waved to the crew of four. "You can go first." She smirked. "We'll be a little occupied."

Gabe winked at him as he jogged up the gate to the _Itzpapalotl_.

The crew of four set up a small portable table and laid out a collection of backup drives all stamped with both the RRE _and_ the Niveus logos. The talk in his department must be right, RRE was hiding something at Niveus. He told the people gathered around the table that he'd take them all.

He was in the process of setting up the money transfer when two more people, a woman and a man, walked out of the other ship. They stopped in front of their gate. Castiel could feel that eerie prickle of someone staring at him. He glanced over to see the man staring intently at him. His stomach twisted at the blank green-eyed stare that looked back at him. Castiel blinked. The man's gaze shifted to each of the other four people; every one fixed with an equally blank stare.

The transfer completed. All it was waiting for was his signature but he was caught up watching the two people across the dock from him. The woman leaned closer to the man. Castiel's chest tightened. He could just make out the choppy speech of someone giving a KAT commands and the monotone reply of a KAT. The man standing across from them wasn't a man. He was a pseud, a weapon built to look human.

Castiel dropped to the ground as soon as he saw the man's arm come up with a gun. There was a deafening series of bangs. The other crew shot back but one by one they fell to the floor. The man and woman disappeared down the gate to the pirate ship. There were shouts and more bangs.

Castiel rolled up to his knees, his heart hammering in his chest, and stripped the shirt off one of the dead crew. He wrapped up the backup drives. He didn't bother completing the money transfer. Who would claim it if they were all dead?

He dashed back to the _Itzpapalotl's_ gate. He didn't want to wait and find out if the woman controlling the KAT was interested in doing business; not with a KAT walking around armed. He his foot had just hit the metal of the airlock when he heard three more bangs and felt his chest erupt in screaming pain.

\---

Meg swore at her inbox. It was still empty. Branch 8 had moved deeper into the _mare liberum_ two weeks ago and Crowley still hadn't bothered to set up a temporary communications hub. Which meant everyone had to wait weeks for the old crappy hub to pick up a message and send it in or out; assuming it didn't just drop the message or garble it into illegibility.

She sent another message to Niveus assuring them that she was in the process of leaving Infinity Regressions and hoped this one actually made it in a reasonable amount of time because as soon as she had her new proxy built she was getting off this shit forsaken station and never looking back.

She sent off another round of tracking requests on all the parts she had ordered to make her new proxy then got to work on what little she could do in her lab. She was pretty damn sure at this point that Crowley had arranged for her proxy to be stolen just to spite her for not giving more notice of her intention to resign.

He was probably sitting in his office with that damn smug smile of his thinking about how not only had he messed up her plans to leave but how he had also _finally_ gotten her to cave to social pressure and just buy a cheap anthrogenic looking proxy. But the joke was on him. She was going to build the most grotesque looking proxy she could and make sure to shake his hand on the way out. Then she was going to write up a sixty page review about how terrible Branch 8 was as a workplace and post it to all the medical forums. Good luck trying to get a neuroprosthetist after that.

The orange light in the corner of the lab started to flash. An emergency alert flashed in her inbox. She hit the emergency stop and pulled up the alert. She might resent being stuck in Branch 8 until the rest of the parts came in for her new proxy but she wasn't going to put someone's life at risk just because she was pissed at Crowley.

She read the alert over. An employee was on their way in with life threatening injuries, three med-kits applied and severe blood loss but still conscious. They'd be there in ten minutes.

She spun up the med-cubicle and got everything sterilized. She sent a request for photos of the injuries and the med-kit data. She got the data but no photos. The med-kits had already pumped the employee full of fluids to keep them from going into hypovolemia but they'd be needing more when they came in.

She checked her supplies. She had enough HemeAid on hand to fill up four anthrogenics from head to toe. The more concerning issue was the unknown foreign object in the heart. The readouts weren't giving her a clear picture as to how badly damaged the heart was. She had a few heart assist devices on hand but nothing premade to outright permanently replace a heart. She got her printers going and started up a blank cell culture just in case she had to make a heart on short notice but she hoped she wouldn't need them. She'd have to keep whoever it was in her lab for a week while the new heart grew.

She moved everything out of the way to make room for a stretcher. She sent another message to staff bringing the wounded employee in but her message bounced back. She cursed. She was going have an angry word or two with Crowley about the communications hub.

She opened the lab doors and waited.

Castiel lurched through the door supported by a smaller man; she had wired him up too but couldn't remember his name. She couldn't quite believe it. How had her newbie, data analysis specialist extraordinaire, ended up with three life threatening wounds? What were they doing to him over in data analysis? And where the hell was that ridiculous coat he was always wearing? That more than anything made her worried. She'd never seen him without that coat. What the hell had happened?

"Why isn't he on a stretcher?" Meg demanded. She finally called up the other man's name, Gabriel. He had been one of the agrestals she had worked on when she had first come to Branch 8 and _that_ didn't make sense because Gabriel was in the requisitions department. Castiel had told her his entire starry-eyed plan of staying away from guns and fights, so what was he doing bleeding all over one of the Crowley's thugs from the DADT department?

"Couldn't fit it through the doors on the ship." Gabriel said. "And he was a stubborn bastard, said he could walk." He dragged Castiel through her lab towards the med-cubicle. He tossed a bag down by the door.

"Get him in and onto the bed." Meg opened the med-cubicle door and waited for Gabriel to drag Castiel in. As soon as Castiel was laying on the table she kicked Gabriel out. "Great, now get out and let me work my magic." She pushed him out with the medical arm and slammed the door closed in his face. He could see himself out of her lab.

She slipped an IV into Castiel arm and started getting his blood volume back up. She snapped a mask over his mouth and nose. She cut his clothes off and tossed them into the trash. "Close your eyes."

Castiel eyes snapped shut. She did a soft sterilization of the room. The mist settled and dried. "Alright. You can open your eyes." She took the mask off.

"Give me the painkiller. The good one." Castiel's voice was a wreck, too hoarse and full of concealed pain.

Meg got the analgesic set up. "Why haven't you turned the pain off?"

" _I can't."_ Castiel gritted out as the analgesic started flowing into him. "One of the shots did something to the wiring. I can't control anything on the left side."

"Shots?" Meg asked as she reviewed the information from the med-kits. _Shots?_ The med-kits didn't say anything about shots. They should have recorded what kind of bullet had been used but all they had recorded was three impact wounds. "Someone _shot_ you?"

" _ **Yes**."_ Castiel growled. His heart beat hard and fast. She turned up the flow on the analgesic.

Meg did a full body scan. Someone had _shot_ the newbie? The last she had seen of him he was still running errands to and from archives. Who would shoot an errand boy? The scan finished. One of the wounds had blown out the main line down his left side before exiting which explained why he couldn't turn the pain off. The second wound seemed to be a through and through that had missed anything vital.

It was strange. Bullets usually exploded after achieving a few centimetres of penetration for maximum damage and they didn't usually spray out across the body. A bullet was smart enough to aim for a lethal shot. She looked for any nasty surprises left behind since the med-kits weren't doing their job but there was almost nothing. No coils of wire, no unexploded micro-bombs, no screw-head points digging their way in, just one lump of metal in the third wound that made her pause. It made her pause because it _looked_ like an honest to god early CE _right out of a history book_ bullet; a dumb hunk of metal lodge in Castiel's heart.

Castiel relaxed into the table as the analgesic took effect.

"Cas, how did you end up with a right out of a history project bullet lodged in you?" Meg asked. She started work on the lesser wounds. Once she got his cybernetic implant back online it could tell her more about what had happened and how Castiel was holding up.

"Is that what they were?" Castiel asked. His features started to unwind.

"Yeah." Meg said as she went about staunching bleeding and patching things up. She tried to lighten the mood, more for herself than Castiel. "This isn't another historical research project is it? Or did you royally piss off someone in archives?"

"No." Castiel cut off a choked laugh. He gave her a goofy smile. "And it wasn't a someone. It was a what."

"A _what_ shot you?" Meg checked to make sure she hadn't given Castiel any Ms. Feel Good by accident. That goofy smile could mean serious complications on the horizon with all the blood he had lost.

She shot off another message asking for a report on what had happened. Her message bounced back again. Great. Now the internal cross department network was down too.

"It was a cat." Castiel said as if that made sense.

She double checked the IV lines. She hadn't mixed them up. She did a brain scan in case the damage to his wiring had fried something further down the line. Everything seemed normal.

"A _cat_ shot you?" Meg asked skeptically. She finished fixing the first wound. It would be a few minutes before his wiring was back online.

"Not a cat." Castiel snorted with laughter. Meg told him to keep still. He nodded gravely and repeated himself. "It was a _cat."_

"A cat." Meg echoed. She double checked that brain scan. She must have missed something.

"Kinetic Artillery's model T. KAT." Castiel explained. "I believe they were named for an urban legend." He was disturbingly calm for someone with an old style bullet in his chest. "I've fought them before while serving New Eden."

"What in fiery hell is a model T?" Meg asked. She knew about Kinetic Artillery, they were one of the biggest violators of PEST but she didn't have a clue as to what a model T was. She moved to the minor wound while she waited for the wiring to come back online. She wasn't about to do heart surgery blind.

"A pseudogenic created for military usage." Castiel angled his head to look down his chest. "I think the wiring is reconnecting." He narrowed his eyes at his chest. "Yes. It's working again."

"Great." Meg grabbed the reader and pressed it against the neuro implant hidden under Castiel's skin just behind his ear. She was flooded with data. Castiel's heart was in rough shape. She closed up the second wound and moved on to the heart wound.

She peeled the med-kit back but left it attached. Between what the med-kit was saying and what Castiel's implant was telling her the med-kit was the only thing keeping his blood pumping. She stuck her scopes in and did some poking around to confirm what the data was telling her.

"You need a new heart." Meg declared.

Castiel made a face as if he had expected as much. "How long?"

"It takes me a couple hours to print a form and about a week to culture your cells on it." Meg said. She got out a heart pump and started replacing the med-kit. Med-kits were great at stopping immediate death but they left a lot to desire if you used them for more than a day or two. "I want to keep you here for monitoring. You can go back to your apartment if you really want to but it'd be better if you stayed."

"For a week?" Castiel asked skeptically. "Crowley won't be happy."

"Crowley can go take a nosedive into a star for all I care." Meg said. She finished up installing the heart pump. "He wants me to stay so bad he can just deal with it."

\---

Castiel woke up muddled and confused. He didn't know where he was at first because his eyes refused to open. His entire body sluggishly rebelled consciousness. His first thought was that New Eden had found him, tranqed him, and taken him back home for punishment but when his eyes finally opened he found himself in the med-cubicle of Meg's lab.

The past few days slowly came back to him; the off station assignment, the fire-fight between pirates, and finally the KAT.

He hadn't realized it was a KAT at first. He had never seen the model before but when it started speaking in that reduced KAT pidgin it had left no doubt in his mind as to what was among them. They looked human but they weren't. They were highly specialized weapons. He had run into them during his last stint of required service with New Eden. They were impossibly hard to bring down in hand to hand combat. The only way to deal with them was at a distance but he hadn't had a gun.

He sat up. His hand went to his chest. There was a thick bandage over his heart. The KAT had shot him. At least Gabe had had the wherewithal to apply the emergency med-kits.

"You're awake." Meg's voice came from overhead.

"Yes. Thank you." Castiel said. "I know it's your job but I'm still glad you were here to help me."

"I tried to send out a message to get some of your personal effects but the cross department network is down." Meg said. The medical arm started moving around him, scanning and prodding. "But Gabe left your travel bag with me."

Castiel frowned. There was a, now familiar, shaded circle in the corner of his vision. There was nothing wrong with any of the company networks as far as he could tell. "I think it's just your connection. I'm seeing it as fine."

"What?" Meg asked surprise. "You're sure? Have you sent anything?"

"I'll do it now." Castiel wrote up a quick message to his department head explaining where he was and what had happened. It still felt strange to be able to write messages in his head and send them off to other people who read them as images projected in front of their eyes.

His message sent. He got a response a few minutes later thanking him for getting the data despite his injuries. Claude said it was already _immensely_ helpful.

"It's working." Castiel said. He frowned at the opposite wall. Why was he able to access the cross department network but Meg wasn't? Meg's department was an essential service. If her connection was offline in her lab then his should be too.

Meg was quiet for a while. Castiel assumed she was busy trying to deduce why her connection was down. Castiel messaged one of his co-workers and asked them to bring him a change of clothes and something to eat. He laid back on the bed exhausted. He'd worry more once he got some rest.

\---

Meg tore through the repairs for her connection and not one of the damn things worked. She tried sending a message as outside mail but it bounced back as soon as she sent it. She started looking through network protocols. Everything said that if anyone's network was still working than hers should be working too. The medical network was an essential service. The only other networks on that list were security and Crowley's personal network. If Castiel could get a connection in her lab then she should also damn well better get a connection too.

The only explanation that she could come up with was that she was being cut off. Someone didn't want her to talk. She was putting her money on Crowley. She didn't know what he'd gain from it but it had to be him. She hadn't done anything to get security after her, so who else would it be?

It dawned on her that her situation had gone from bad to terrifying. Her proxy was gone and now she couldn't send out messages; not even within the station. She was utterly trapped.

"Are you alright?"

She had forgotten she had a visitor. "Yeah. Great."

She checked on his vitals. The heart pump was doing its job but his body was still under massive amounts of stress. She might have to put things back together and filled in the cracks but the patches hadn't taken yet.

"Don't move around too much." Meg warned. "You're holding together with paperclips and tape."

What was she supposed to do? How did she get a message out? Why was she being cut off in the first place? Crowley couldn't want a doctor that badly and it wasn't as if they were trying to force her to work. She was still getting paid. Why would Crowley keep paying her if he was holding her hostage?

"Meg? Did you want me to ask IT to come?"

Meg realized that was the third time Castiel had asked that. "Ah. Yeah. Thanks."

Castiel sat still. Meg recognized the twitching fingers of someone still learning to give up a manual interface. He squinted at the wall. His fingers twitched again. His eyebrows drew together in concern. "They're insisting nothing's wrong with your network. Do you want me to contact Crowley?"

"No." She said quickly. She needed to think before she started talking to Crowley.

"Meg. This is _extremely_ troubling considering your proxy was stolen from storage not long ago." Castiel said as if he wasn't sitting there with a hole in his chest. He should be the one extremely troubled. Castiel sat up. "Meg?"

Meg laughed abruptly. The _newbie_ thought this was extremely troubling. Well, now she _knew_ she was in hot water.

\---

Castiel had never thought someone without a body could fill a room with tension but Meg managed spectacularly. Machines would cut out abruptly or start up without warning and lights would flicker in the depths of her lab. The med-cubicle stayed reasonably comfortable and well lit through it all but the whirr of angry machines on the other side of the door was ominous.

He had considered going to his apartment to recover and wait for his new heart, giving Meg her privacy, but her lack of access to the cross department network meant returning to his apartment was even less advisable. If something happened no one would be able to alert her to the emergency; he'd show up unannounced and have to hope Meg wasn't with another patient.

He sent a few more messages to IT on her behalf but was met with increasingly dismissive responses. It was aggravating. When he had first arrived he wouldn't have questioned it when people dismissed Meg as _only_ an intelligence but the more he read about them and the more he talked to Meg the more maddening it was that anthrogenics would treat other humans with such little respect.

He couldn't understand why she was suddenly cut off from the cross department network and all external mail but the likelihood that it wasn't related to her proxy were slim. He had been at Branch 8 long enough to know that nothing happened in the station without _someone_ seeing it. It made him skeptical of the appearance of a KAT on his first trip from the station. Was that coincidence? Or was it the same kind of _'accidents'_ Meg was experiencing?

"Hey Cas. I'm seeing someone for a quick fix." Meg said interrupting him from his thoughts. "You mind waiting in my office for a few minutes?"

"Of course not." Castiel said. He slid off the table. He grabbed his coat and pulled it on. He went out into the lab and looked around for the door to her office. It was hidden behind a large piece of machinery. Despite all the time he had spent in Meg's lab he didn't know what most of the machine did or what they were called.

"You can take a look at your heart while you're in there." Meg said.

The door to her office opened. Castiel stepped in. She hadn't let him see his new heart before. She hadn't told him much of anything since she found out that no one would help bring her network connection back up.

"Mind the abandoned projects." Meg said. An overhead arm pushed things out of the way and unburied a chair behind a desk that was covered in glassware.

Castiel sat down and peered at the glassware. There were old implants and lumps of what looked like flesh inside each of them. "Do you mind if I ask what you were working on?"

Meg made a noise that Castiel had learned was the auditory equivalent of a shrug. "Sure. Why not? It's not like I can do anything with them right now." The arm pointed out each glass container and explained the different methods she was using to try and stop the flesh cultures from rejecting the implants. "I think I got it too. When I get out of here Niveus is going to pay me big." The arm tapped the glass.

" _Niveus?"_ Castiel asked surprised. He must have heard her wrong. The bullets must have somehow damaged his hearing. "You were selling something to _Niveus?"_

" _Yeah."_ Meg said confused. "You got something against good works?"

Castiel let out a quiet understated huff. Good works? From what he understood from Sun Richard Roman Enterprises was hiding its bioweapons development for Kinetic Artillery in Niveus's labs.

"Niveus is owned by RRE." Castiel said. This explained why Meg had suddenly been cut off. Someone must have sold her out or her name had come up in those backup drives stamped with the RRE and Niveus logos. Her communications failure seemed to coincide with his arrival. It had to be something he had brought back.

"I don't get it." Meg said. The overhead arm pushed at the glassware until they were all in a perfect straight line. "What's RRE?"

"Richard Roman Enterprises. They have their fingers in everything. Niveus, Kinetic Artillery, SurcoCorp, Sandover. There's more. My department has been—" Castiel stopped himself. What if Meg was a spy for RRE? What if he had almost told a spy that his department had been amassing information against them?

He kept his face carefully passive. What did it mean when there was a spy in a company? In New Eden they were handed over to a superior and never seen again. But this wasn't New Eden. Infinity Regressions wasn't a country with a government to betray‒ both things he had done. IR was a company. Even if Meg had been spying on IR did that really merit effectively being held prisoner?

Except they were in the _mare liberum_ where anyone could declare to be a country.

"Niveus _and_ Sandover." Meg repeated slowly. "Sandover." The arm tapped out a strange rhythm against the desk. "Niveus and Sandover." The tapping stopped. "Crowley thinks I sold him out."

Castiel kept quiet. That was likely the exact reason why Meg's proxy was stolen and her communications were failing. He hoped Crowley was wrong. He hoped it was the paranoia that ran rampant throughout the station that had led to a rather severe misunderstanding. Meg couldn't be a spy. Well, that was exactly the kind of feeling a spy should invoke, but still, he didn't want her to be.

\---

Meg did her best to keep her cool while Castiel was in her lab. She didn't think she was fooling anyone, least of all Castiel, and from the way he had gone quiet yesterday she was sure he thought she was a spy too.

She was such an idiot. How had she not put it together? She had thought Crowley was just pissed that she was leaving on short notice, not trying to quietly imprison her as a corporate spy. She should have known from the start that Crowley would figure out that she was working part time for someone else; all he did was snoop and dig up information.

And the bugs in her lab! She had _destroyed_ them. That must have only made her look _more_ suspicious! Who would sweep their lab for bugs except for spies?

What in fiery hell did she _do?_ Did she fess up to taking a consulting job with Niveus and tell Crowley she didn't know who they really were? Or did she just keep quiet? Would he believe her if she told him? What if he never let her leave? What if—

She was interrupted from her increasingly panicky thoughts by the bell of the door. She opened up the lab door. An office mail drone waited outside her door. She sent one of the lab's little transport units to the door. The drone placed a notepad and a jar onto the transport unit. Meg read over the ownership seals. The notepad was hers but the jar was Castiel's.

She caught sight of the label on the jar. They were fingertip implants for the company guns. Why would Castiel need that? Were they really that worried about a repeat of Castiel's last trip out?

She moved the transport unit to the med-cubicle where Castiel was still waiting on his new heart. She'd have it done in two more days. Despite how utterly and completely she had been wrong about why Crowley wouldn't let her leave she had been right to tell Castiel to stay in her lab. The heart pump had dislodged twice. They hadn't been extremely urgent emergencies but it had been urgent enough.

"You got a delivery." Meg said. She opened the med-cubicle doors. She plucked the notepad off the tray and turned it on. It was an inbox and nothing else. She could receive messages but she couldn't send them out. Crowley thought she was a spy. Fiery hell, what did she do?

Castiel picked up the jar and puzzled over it. He blinked twice. She watched him read. His puzzled expression went from confused to quietly horrified. Her monitors started picking up an extreme stress response. His heart was trying to thump its way right out of his chest and she couldn't have that until she had the new heart ready.

"Lay down." Meg commanded. She reached out with the medical arm and pushed him back until he slumped down onto the table. Meg checked the heart pump and his other wounds. Everything was _physically_ fine.

"What's going on?" Meg asked. "Do I need to get out Mr. Feel Better?" She held up the IV line.

"I'm going to be transferred to requisitions in six weeks." Castiel said quietly. He set the jar aside like it was live bomb.

"To the _DADT?"_ That took her for a loop. He had told her that New Eden trained all its citizens as soldiers but Castiel didn't seem cut out for it. He was so quiet- except for when he was being a smartass- and every time the conversation turned to New Eden he always seemed so sad about it all. Castiel wasn't cut out for something like the DADT....well except for the part where he had been shot three times with practically ancient bullets and then walked into her lab on his own two feet.

Castiel looked up at the camera confused. "The DADT?"

"Don't ask, don't tell." Meg explained. The DADT department didn't so much as ask for information as forcibly take it no matter who was in their way. Almost 90% of the 'accidents' that came into her lab were from the DADT department.

Castiel huffed out a sad laugh, "That's one way of putting it."

She watched him stare sadly at the message he must be reading. Here was the starry-eyed newbie who just wanted to get away from the guns and war and Crowley was trying to stuff him right back into it. "Tell Crowley to fuck off." Meg said firmly. She hoped Crowley had bugged the notepad just so he could hear that.

Castiel shook his head sadly. "It's not worded directly but..." He looked at the jar and sighed. "I'm sure I'll be fired if I don't accept the transfer." He put a hand to his head and rubbed at his forehead. "And if you're being suspected of being a spy I can only imagine what other companies would think if I applied to them. I defected from my country and immediately went to work for a company that steals sensitive information. Who would hire me? How would I live?"

Meg grabbed the jar on impulse. She opened it up and reached into the sterilizing liquid. She scooped up the implants. She crushed them. "Oh no. They're broken. That's a real shame." She said for the potential bugs in her notepad.

She grabbed the notepad and tossed it back on the transport unit. She put the jar with the crush implants on it and shoved the whole thing out the door. She closed the door to the med-cubicle. She did a thorough check for bugs. She didn't find any.

"Meg, what're you doing?" Castiel asked.

If Crowley wanted to push them around like pawns then she was going to be pushed her way.

"Those were for company guns." Meg explained. "You can buy universal weapons implants right here on the station."

Castiel looked up at one of her cameras confused. "I don't understand."

"You don't want the transfer, right?" Meg said.

Castiel nodded slowly. "No." Then slowly added, "I really don't. I left New Eden because I didn't want to be a soldier in someone else's wars."

"How are you ever going to leave if your hardware is company specific?" Meg asked. Making employees use company specific implants was almost as bad as _loyalty policies._ How were they ever supposed to think for themselves if the company owned a part of them?

\---

Castiel had doubted that the appearance of a KAT during his first trip outside the station was a coincidence but now, with a jar of implants for weapons sitting outside the med-cubicle with his name on them, he was sure it had been a test. He laid still and quietly contemplated a life where he was stuck at IR indefinitely; carrying out violent data requisitions for a company that would hold its own employees hostage.

"Alright." Castiel said. He sat up. "Where do I buy the universals?"

Meg told him the address to a vendor on floor six. She recommended that he go down and get them himself to prevent tampering. He thought that was probably prudent.

She gave him a thorough check up and declared him healthy enough to go across the station, buy the implants, and return.

It was a surprisingly difficult task. His body felt worn and tired by the time he had returned. Meg had warned him to take it slow. The heart pump wouldn't keep up with a high level of activity, brisk walking was evidently too active.

Like most things Meg did it was quick and efficient. He had the implants in his fingertips shortly after he got his breathing under control.

The day Meg replaced the heart pump with his new heart a package arrived for him. Another set of company implants. Meg tossed them into the incinerator. It was satisfyingly liberating.

He left Meg's lab promising to help her get the parts she'd need to build a new proxy and forward any messages she had for friends or family.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HemeAid - my generic brand name for a blood replacement. 
> 
> Castiel's mention of KATs being named after an urban legend is an oblique reference to the Terminator series.
> 
> My fictional UN Standard Spanish embraces more Nahuatl loan words.
> 
> acallachiani - literally boat pilot, but in context think captain of the ship.
> 
> acalquixtimeh - is derived from the word acalquixtia which means to take boats out of water , in this context it means boats/ships at dock/harbour. Thus, todos los acalquixtimeh, is every ship in the harbour.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The proxy situation was getting more difficult by the day. Every time she sent Castiel out with a list of parts he couldn't find half of them or they'd be sold out. Then he'd have to come back and she'd have to re-design from what parts they could find. They had tried ordering parts but the orders either never got through or mysteriously went missing in transit. Nothing ever showed up.

 

Meg was still surprised that Castiel of all people had thrown in with her. Maybe he didn't like his department transfer but that didn't mean that siding with the person not so subtly being accused of spying was a good idea.

She had taken Castiel up on his offer to forward some messages for her to everyone back on Mariner Orbital but she didn't think it was a good idea to start dragging them into it. So she had sent a few messages assuring them that she was okay and not to trust a damn thing Sandover said. She kept her messages brief. She had heard things about Crowley and the fact that he was holding her prisoner in her own lab was making her think the rumours might be true. She didn't want that kind of person to set their sights on her family.

The proxy situation was getting more difficult by the day. Every time she sent Castiel out with a list of parts he couldn't find half of them or they'd be sold out. Then he'd have to come back and she'd have to re-design from what parts they _could_ find. They had tried ordering parts but the orders either never got through or mysteriously went missing in transit. Nothing ever showed up. Meg knew it had to be Crowley intercepting her packages. Castiel never outright agreed with her on who was stopping her parts from getting through but it wasn't—

What if Crowley had planted Castiel as a spy? What if the newbie had been a spy from day one? His story was like something out of a bad slice of life novel. The soldier that just wanted to be a data analyst?

She slammed the few doors around in her lab that could be slammed, completely disgusted with herself. Castiel had shown up with a real honest to goodness _death chip_ in him and had been rushed to her with three life threatening wounds. What sort of spy would have that kind of loyalty to _Crowley?_ Castiel wasn't a spy. _She_ was getting paranoid.

She gave the doors another half-hearted slam. She was getting paranoid but she had every right to be. She was being held prisoner by a shady businessman and rumour said he had done it before; done worse before.

She did her best to hold back her paranoia while they failed at gathering parts for her new proxy.   

It was all entirely frustrating until one day Castiel gave an exasperated sigh and said, "Just make a partial and I'll take you with me."

Then it was entirely _awkward._

"You know how that works?" Meg asked cautiously. First she'd have to make some additions to Castiel's wiring and implants to support a partial. Then, if Castiel still wanted to go through with it, they'd know way too much about each other. Sharing a body with a partial meant sharing part of the mind too. Memories had a habit of getting tangled up in all that. At least she could pick and choose what she included in a partial copy of herself. She could weed out the embarrassing memories but Castiel would have his whole brain on display.

"I trust you not to take over." Castiel said firmly.

Despite her paranoia in the last few weeks they had gone from friendly co-workers to actual friends but Meg hadn't realized that Castiel thought they were the _share a body and mind_ type of friends. That was some extreme trust and she wasn't sure if _she_ trusted him. Even if that quiet wiggly fear that _maybe_ she was wrong about Castiel not being a spy wasn't eating away at the back of her mind she still wasn't sure she'd trust Castiel with a piece of herself.

"Okay. Let's say I'm down for it." Meg said because maybe she could scrounge up the courage to do it if Castiel could. He had more to lose than she did in that situation. "You know our memories will bleed over to each other, right?"

Castiel paused. It looked like he didn't know about that little quirk. He eased back as though he was leaning away from the idea. "...what type of memories?"

"Any, really." Meg said. "From what I've read sometimes it's just the memory of a scent, other times it's full blown detailed memories of an event."

"You've never done it before?" Castiel asked surprised.

"No. I never needed to." Meg said and didn't add that she hadn't ever trusted anyone to carry around a piece of herself. Could she really trust Castiel? They were in a state of mutually assured destruction if either of them ratted out the other but was that enough to trust each other?

Castiel leaned back against the table. He pressed his lips together. He let out a long steady breath and looked up at the camera in the med-cubicle. "If you're not opposed to it," Castiel said carefully. "I still think it's the best way."

Meg hesitated, trying to decide if she was a coward or if she had courage.

If she didn't do it she'd be stuck until she worked things out with Crowley. Who knew how long that would take?

If she did it, it could really mess up the budding friendship she was building with Castiel but it would mean she could get off the station. She didn't like the idea of using Castiel for his mobility but he had offered and it really would take forever to piece together a proxy otherwise. If they did this they could store the parts of her proxy in Castiel's apartment and she could work on it in secret there....assuming Castiel didn't mind letting her use his hands.

"Okay. But we'll need to fix you up first." Meg said. She gave him a quick and dirty rundown of how it worked then made a list of everything she'd need and sent him back to floor six to find what they'd need.

He was on his way out the door when she stopped him. "You might want to buy a few pre-loaded credit cards and swap them a few times." Meg wasn't sure how closely Crowley was watching her but it couldn't hurt to be careful. "You never know who's watching."

Castiel gave her one of his rare smiles. "I'll be careful."

\---

It took longer to do what Meg had recommended with the credit cards than it did to purchase what they needed. It wasn't that people were suspicious about his motivations to keep what he was purchasing a secret. It was that people were suspicious that he'd report them. The longer he lived on the station the more paranoia he saw.

Castiel found what they needed in two stops. There wasn't much Meg needed; more nervous system filament and a series of parts Meg assured him would create something called a shunt. The entire purchase fit into one pocket of his trench coat.

He brought the supplies back to Meg's lab.

"Everything go okay?" Meg asked.

"Yes." Castiel said. The med-cubicle door opened. Castiel took his cue and made his way to it. He set down the items Meg had asked for on the table. "How long will it take you to build the shunt?"

"Ten minutes." Meg said. She started sorting through the parts. "Hey, can you grab me my micro-welder? It's around the other side of the ventilation hoods."

Castiel looked back out to the lab. He knew what the ventilation hoods were but what did a micro-welder look like? He started for the door. "Yes, but I'll need you to point it out."

"No problem." Meg said. She let him out. "I'll race you to it."

"You're everywhere at once in the lab." Castiel pointed out.

"Then I guess that means I won." Meg laughed.

Castiel laughed and shook his head. He picked his way through her lab. There was a transport unit waiting beside the ventilation hoods. There was a small slate grey and red stylus-like device on it. "Is that it?"

"Yep." Meg's voice came from overhead. "Keep the red end pointed away from yourself. That's the part that gets hot."

Castiel picked it up between two fingers. He flinched in surprise when the implants in his fingers reacted to it.

"Didn't burn yourself, did you?" Meg asked. "Should be off."

"No. I'm fine." Castiel said. A textbox appeared in his vision telling him about the lethality of the tool. It wasn't the first time that the implants had started feeding him information about a seemingly innocent tool. He had been surprised when it first happened. He hadn't realized that when Meg said _universal_ she had meant for more than guns.

He brought the micro-welder back to Meg. She picked it out of his hands and got to work. As promised, ten minutes later she had a small circular disk with hair-thin wires protruding from it. It made his stomach unsettled. It looked like a larger version of the loyalty policy that had been embedded into his neck. What had he agreed to?

\---

She held up the shunt. It was deceptively unassuming but the little device she had built would allow for two-way access directly to the wiring in Castiel's brain. "You still up for this?" Meg asked. She wasn't sure if _she_ was still up for this.

Castiel eyed the shunt. She watched his breathing stutter for a split second before evening out. "Yes."

Meg pointed at the table. "Hop up. You don't need to lay down. This isn't major surgery." She angled his head to the side and taped his ear back. She sterilized the skin behind his ear then made small incision. She wiped the blood away. She sterilized the shunt and slipped it into the incision. She glued his skin back together and took the tape off his ear.

"That was it?" Castiel asked surprised.

"It's working its way in." Meg explained. The disk would stay near the surface to allow for contact while the wires worked their way to the tiny computer that connected all the nervous system filaments. "You'll know when it's done."

They waited silently. Meg wasn't sure if that was because it was too tense to talk or if neither of them knew what to say. She definitely didn't know what to say. She was waiting on someone who wanted to share their body with her. She had always figured if she was going to do that with anyone it would have been Ruby. Sure, they pretended to hate each other but she knew Ruby and Ruby knew her. Ruby would never let anything happen to a piece of her and she'd never snatch Ruby's body. She didn't really _know_ Castiel and he didn't really _know_ her. They were both taking a leap of faith.

Castiel's eyes narrowed at something only he could see. "There's a parallelogram with lines to one side of it."

"That's the manual run command." Meg told him. "Hit it. It'll ask you a few question then ask if you want to run the program."

Castiel nodded. Meg watched and waited to see if Castiel would really do it.

"Now what?" Castiel asked.

"Now I make a partial." Meg said because apparently Castiel really was going to do it. If Castiel could trust that she wouldn't take off with his body then she was going to trust that he wouldn't take off with a partial copy of herself.

\---

Castiel waited outside Meg's office. He wasn't sure what went into making a partial copy of a person but gathered it was private. He didn't know if the wait was long or short- how long did it take to copy part of a person's thoughts?- but eventually Meg's office door opened. The overhead arm in the office held out a small black strip.

Castiel put his hand out. The black strip was dropped into his palm. It was the length of the first joint of his thumb. This was a partial, part of Meg was inside of it. He couldn't believe how small it was.

"You stick it on over the shunt. It holds on by itself." Meg said. She sounded nervous. "When you put it on there'll be two icons. A green one with a squashed U point towards the corner and a red one with an upside down squashed U. If you still want to do this hit the green button. If you don't, hit the red button." Meg closed the door to her office. "If you're going to hit the green button it'll be less weird if you wait to do it until you're out of the lab. Then you won't be talking to me _and_ talking to me."

Castiel breathed deeply and put the black strip behind his ear. The two icons were immediately in his vision. "I can see them." Castiel informed her.

"Great." Meg said. "...so....are we doing this?"

Castiel turned to look across Meg's lab to the doors. "Yes."

"Don't let anything happen to me. It's not all of me but it's still me." Meg said sternly. "And bring me back when we're done so I can cut and paste the memory files over."

"I won't let anything happen to you." Castiel assured her. "And I'll bring you back in one piece."

"Good." Meg said. She opened the lab doors. "Now go forth and conquer."

Castiel wasn't sure if he should say goodbye or if he should say anything at all. As soon as he was out the door they'd be talking again. He settled on see you soon which made Meg laugh and his heart beat a little faster. Maybe this wasn't a good idea. Somewhere in the last few weeks he had started having _thoughts_ about Meg. He wasn't sure if they were just the result of having a friendship not ruled by his position in a military or if they were something more.

He stepped out the lab doors. They closed behind. He looked between the two icons.  He had invited her to do this... He hit the green button. There was a soundless beep in his head and a strange prickling feeling went across his scalp.

 _Hey Cas._ Meg's voice filled his head.

"Meg." Castiel said.

 _You can talk like this._ Meg said. _Don't want everyone to think you're going crazy._

Castiel furrowed his eyebrows in concentration. In the end he found it was much like typing messages without his fingers. He had to _think_ the words one at a time.

 _Like this?_ He asked.

 _Yep._ Meg made a startled noise. _Oh whoa. I knew but.... how do you get around seeing just two things at a time?_ Meg asked astounded.

"What?" Castiel asked aloud, too surprised to think the word.

 _Binocular vision._ Meg chuckled. She added a teasing, _You know I could whip up another eye for you._

 _No thank you._ Castiel quickly thought. Where would one even put another eye? He thought of Meg's stolen proxy. She'd had cameras throughout it. And her lab was full of camera feeds. Two simple eyes was probably disorienting to her.

Meg asked if she could access a few of his sensory perceptions beyond eyesight. Castiel didn't see why not. He told her yes.

Castiel walked to the shop on floor six that Meg wanted to start their search in. Meg reveled in the brush of fabric across his skin and the feel of air against his face. Somatic senses were a novelty to her.

When they reached the first shop Meg was temporarily distracted from her commentary about how his sense of smell was different from the standard _stim-files_ most intelligences used by a memory.

 _Cas? You mind if I ask who the woman with dark hair and eyes like yours is?_ She asked shyly.   

Castiel guessed that she was probably seeing his sister. _Hannah. My sister._ Castiel said. _She gave me my coat._ There was a warm feeling not his own that travelled down his spine.

 _I like her already._ Meg said. _Hey! Turn your head a little to the right, I think I see something useful._

Castiel obediently turned his head. Meg muttered to herself about parts. He didn't quite understand the broken sentences and wondered if they counted as Meg thinking to herself or thinking at him.

It was his turn to stumble over a memory while they were in the middle of buying parts. He had a disorientating flash of seeing something pink from six different angles all at once and then a limb from Meg's stolen proxy stuck to a door.

 _What happened to you that you lost a limb to a door?_ Castiel asked perplexed.

Meg burst into laughter and explained how the missing limb had come to be there. Castiel wasn't sure if he thought it was funny or morbid. Meg definitely thought it was funny.

 _It's still there last I heard._ Meg said proudly.

They searched through the few shops in the station that had parts Meg needed and bought what they could without looking suspicious. They had agreed to drop them off at his apartment. It would be a while before Meg could build anything and it was always possible that Crowley was watching her lab to see if she was trying to leave. They weren't sure what Crowley would do then.

He made it back to Meg's lab before she was inundated with any embarrassing memories or hard to explain thoughts. He was probably just confusing a _real_ friendship for something more.

He said another _see you soon_ and took off the partial. He walked through the lab doors. Meg was waiting for him with a transport unit. He set the partial onto the unit. It was whisked away into her lab. In a few minutes time Meg picked up the flow of their conversation as if she had sent her whole self out with him.

\---

By the fourth time Castiel came to take her partial out they had gathered most of the parts she'd need. This time instead of perusing the shops on floor six he had picked up tools from her lab and took them home.  

She'd had to make some creative choices and workarounds. She couldn't bring the entire heat press or a ventilation hood in Castiel's pocket but she could reprogram the micro-welder to an extra low setting and bring a portable containment bubble.

She still wasn't sure what to do about a proper working space. She didn't want to take over Castiel's tiny living space but Castiel assured her he had worked something out.

When they walked through the door to Castiel's apartment she was surprised to see his bed pushed into one corner of the living room. He walked across his apartment to his bedroom. He opened the door.

"Will this do?" Castiel asked aloud. He looked around the room slowly for her benefit.

Meg watched the room go by before Castiel's eyes. He had set up a small work table and bench. All the parts they had been accumulating were carefully stacked on shelves and the multipurpose tools she had bought were organized on trays or in bins. There was even a tiny incinerator for waste tucked away in one corner.

 _Yeah._ Meg said. _Yeah, this will do. Fiery hell. Yeah, this is great._

"You like it?" Castiel asked.

 _Yeah. I like it._ Meg assured him. Holy frozen crap he had gone the extra kilometer sometime in the last week. The last time she was at his apartment to drop parts off all her things were still being stowed away under the couch. _You didn't have to do this._

"I thought you might need a better work space than the kitchen table." Castiel said. She felt him shrug- which was weird- before he started emptying his pockets. "And I don't mind."

 _Well, still. Thanks._ Meg said. She watched as her tools were laid out carefully on the workbench. They had agreed that when they got to this point she could take over control of his arms, hands, and eyes to work on her proxy. When Castiel was ready she was going to be the one using the hands that were currently laying out the tools and when she was done building her proxy she was going to trust those hands to take her _whole self_ out of her lab and to her proxy.

Castiel moved a few more things around the workspace then went out to the living room to take off his coat. He folded it up carefully and set it on the couch. He went back into the other room and sat down on the bench. "Alright. I'm ready."

It took her a couple of tries before she figured out how to take control of Castiel's arms and hands and a few minutes more to understand how they worked. When she got the coordination down she brought his hands up and pressed his fingers together. She watched the way the muscles flexed in his hands.

 _That's so strange._ Meg said. She put his arms down and dragged a hand across the table. _It feels almost the same as my touch capabilities but...it's different. More you I guess._

"Is that a good thing?" Castiel asked.

 _I think so._ Meg said. She looked around for what she'd need. He twitched when she moved his eyes. He took in a sharp breath. She could feel him smile nervously.

"This is what it's like for you." Castiel said. "Watching but not doing."

 _Yep._ Meg said. She started setting up her containment bubble. _Weird, isn't it?_

"A little." Castiel agreed.

Meg looked up, glancing over the contents of each shelf. Castiel had set almost everything up to be within arm's reach but not in the way. He must have put a lot of thought into how to set up the room as a workshop.

\---

It was unsettling at first to watch his hands pick up delicate things and not be able to control where he was looking but the longer Meg worked the more he relaxed. Meg wasn't going to snatch his body and leave him a prisoner in his own mind. He had trusted her enough to invite her in and in return she trusted him to eventually bring all of herself to her proxy....and then Meg would leave.

 _You're not freaking out are you?_ Meg asked. _You're awfully quiet._

"I was just thinking." Castiel said. He had known when he had suggested they do this that the entire point was for Meg to leave Branch 8. He pushed aside the quiet voice in the back of his head that wanted to ask her to stay. He couldn't ask Meg to stay on Branch 8 with what was happening to her. "If there's anything you can teach me to do when you're not here I could try to help with that. It would speed things along."

 _Hey, can you talk in your head while I work? The vibrations from your throat are throwing me off._ Meg said. She held up the micro-welder. _Wouldn't want to have to put your fingers back on the first time I take them for a spin._

 _That would be unfortunate._ Castiel said.

Meg chuckled in his head. She picked up one of the tools on the table and a jar filled with small silver cylinders. She started explaining how to put bearings into place. She assured him that it was simpler than it seemed. _You'll be able to do it on your own, no problem._

Castiel paid close attention as Meg explained one thing after another. Some of it sounded surprisingly easy; gluing pieces together. Other parts sounded far too complex to do in his tiny bedroom-turned-workroom. Meg was sure it could all be done.

They worked well into the night. It was Meg that declared the day over.  

 _That's it for today._ Meg said. She flexed his hands out in front of him. _Your reflexes are slowing down._

He felt her draw away and very suddenly he had use of his arms back. It was disorienting. He reached out and pressed his fingers against the wall. They didn't quite feel like his yet. He held them up and looked them over as if expecting them to have changed now that someone else had used them.   

 _Didn't damage the goods, did I?_ Meg joked.

"No, it just feels a little strange having control back." Castiel said. He stood up and brushed himself off. He cleaned up what little mess there was and put away the tools and parts Meg had built.

 _So, how's the transfer going?_ Meg asked as he finished clearing the table.

"I'm still with the analysis department while I'm in training." Castiel said. He turned the light off and stepped out of the room. "It's mostly for things I already know." He said bitterly. Weapons training and how to handle hostile encounters were why he left New Eden. He picked up his coat and pulled it on. "I requested to stay in the data analysis department again."

Meg made a sympathetic noise. _I take it Crowley didn't buy into it?_

"No." Castiel said. Crowley had given him a thin smile and told him that his training would be over soon. He headed for his door. "One more week and the transfer will be official."

 _...but you'll do okay?_ Meg asked, worried. _Big tough newbie from New Eden, no match for pirates, right?_

"I'm sure it won't be that bad." Castiel said, stepping into the hall. He wasn't sure at all but he didn't want to say anything that might encourage Meg to stay when she could be in danger.

 _It better not be._ Meg warned. _I don't want to see you in my lab for professional reasons anymore._

As Castiel walked back to Meg's lab he did his best to assure her that if he had survived all his years of service for New Eden, he would surely survive a few pirates that probably wanted to kill _each other,_ if experience was anything to go by.

Castiel had stopped in front of the lab doors and was reaching up to take the little black strip off from behind his ear when Meg made a surprised noise.

 _What's wrong?_ Castiel asked. He looked around himself. There wasn't anything unusual in the hall outside Meg's door.

 _I....uh...._ Meg hesitated. _I hit a memory._

 _What is it?_ Castiel asked. Meg didn't usually sound so nervous when one of his memories sprang up. She was rather adept at distinguishing between the thoughts or memories he was able to talk about and those he wasn't. _Meg?_

 _You like me._ Meg said quietly. _Like **that?** ....Cas?_

Castiel yanked the black strip off and Meg was suddenly gone.

\---

Meg opened the lab doors to let Castiel in. "Hope we had a productive day."

Castiel nodded. He dropped the partial on the nearest transport unit then hurried out of her lab like she was chasing after him with a dental drill.

She trained her cameras on the lab door and watched it perplexed. Her confusion turned to apprehension. What if she had messed up putting her partial together and it had been a complete ass? "Fiery hell. I hope I didn't spend the whole day making chicken jokes."

Castiel had taken her partial out half a dozen times now. She didn't have any reason to think anything would go wrong. They both had certain memories they politely ignored. Hers were embarrassing moments from home that were integral to her personality. His were from New Eden sending him to war.

She downloaded her partial and hoped that chicken jokes were the worst that had happened.

The lights flickered across her lab in surprise when she saw what it was that had made Castiel turn tail and run. He was smitten with her and he didn't know what to do about it. She had gotten one clear recent memory of Castiel thinking warm fuzzy thoughts about her.

She banged out a quick message telling Castiel to get the hell back to her lab. He came back twenty minutes later looking more uncomfortable than when he had shown up with a gaping chest wound.

"I'm sorry." Castiel said dejectedly. "I was hoping you wouldn't be able to tell." Castiel looked around the lab trying to avoid direct eye contact with any of her video feeds. "I.... we.... you...."

It was the first time she had ever heard him at a loss for words.  

Meg decided to just get it over with. "What do you usually do when you're sweet on someone?"

Castiel snapped his head around. Meg chuckled. She could see him from anywhere in the lab but he liked to pick one or two spots to talk.

"You're not offended?" Castiel asked cautiously.

"Should I be?" Meg asked amused.

"....I...don't think so?" Castiel said sounding unsure of himself. "How would...I mean....we could never.....physical aspects....."

"Do you want it to be physical?" Meg asked curiously. She had been friendly enough with some other intelligences to swap everything from affectionate to raunchy stim-files but she hadn't ever gotten physical with an anthrogenic. What would that even be like?   

Castiel's eyes went wide and flicked over to the med-cubicle.

Meg burst into laughter. "Don't get your hopes up. That arm is a delicate piece of machinery. We are _not_ going to defile it."

Castiel's face went blank. Meg knew he must be shutting down all the responses to blush. He was getting better at using the wiring to control himself.

"You could take me to dinner first before we talked about defiling things." Meg suggested. "You anthrogenics like to eat I've noticed." She joked. "And if it gets too awkward I swear I'll delete the memory and then you can pretend it never happened."

Castiel's squinted in confusion. "Dinner?" He looked across her lab bewildered. "You can't eat."

Meg chuckled again. "No. But _you_ can. You can take my partial out."

"Take your....partial...." Castiel looked lost. He straightened up and nodded. "What day would be most convenient?"

"It's a partial, Cas." Meg said amused. "Literally any day."

"Ah. Yes." Castiel said. He nodded solemnly. "Of course."

Between Castiel being utterly lost and way too serious about it she managed to tease out plans for dinner two days from now. She wondered if he was this befuddled by anyone he asked out on a date or if it was just the prospect of his date _wearing_ him that had him confused.

He managed to make a _mostly_ graceful getaway ten minutes later with only a few concerned glances at the equipment in her lab and one stuttered goodbye.

When the lab doors closed behind him Meg wondered what she had gotten herself into. She hadn't had the urge to date anyone in years, not since she had been in school, but Castiel had thrown his lot in with her when everyone else was happy to ignore her problems. That was probably better grounds for a date than finishing finals.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She spent the next two days worrying about what she should include in her partial; definitely not the part where she worried for two days or all the times she had worked herself up worrying about whether he was a spy.

 

She spent the next two days worrying about what she should include in her partial; definitely not the part where she worried for two days or all the times she had worked herself up worrying about whether he was a spy.

Some of it was easy. She'd put in all her conversations with Castiel but what else did she include? Everything she knew about chickens just as a joke? Stuff about home? Her time training to be a doctor?

She ended up with an eclectic mix with a few notes about which topics she knew about but hadn't included.

She copied over everything she thought might be important to the potential _romancing_ they might be getting up to tonight. She felt that strange feeling of splitting; of pulling apart. She was leaving behind her whole self for the confines of a tiny black portable partial. It was like being blind. As a partial all she could do was wait. It had always been one of her fears, to be a partial copy of herself and wait forever; to be forgotten. She knew she'd never leave a partial copy of herself laying around but it still worked her up every time. She didn't have any control over what happened when she was like this— except for the whole her that was probably passing the partial off to Castiel.

She waited in the unnerving stillness that always came with being a partial that wasn't connected to anything. Intelligences that had started off as something else called it darkness but it wasn't. There wasn't anything but absolute perfect stillness when she was waiting as a partial.

Then suddenly she was linked up and the stillness shattered.

_Good evening Meg._

It took Meg a second to orient herself. Seeing with just two eyes and having skin that touched everything all the time without stopping always took a moment to get used to.

 _Hey Cas. Hope you're just as nervous as I am._ She said. She tapped into his vision. They were already in the hall.

 _You're nervous?_ Castiel asked surprised.

 _Well yeah._ Meg said. She was finally getting used to the way Castiel's vision rose and fell with each step. _We have a good thing going right now but what if I start telling jokes about chickens and have to delete this whole mess?_

Castiel laughed allowed, startling two people in the hall as they passed by. _I hope this won't be a mess._ Castiel chuckled quietly to himself this time. _I can only take so many chicken jokes._

 _Oh, so you know your official chicken joke limit?_ Meg teased.

Meg managed to only tell _one_ chicken joke on the walk to Castiel's apartment. She thought that was pretty good self-control on her part. Ruby would've been proud.

The walk to Castiel's apartment was familiar now. She didn't pay much attention to it until she was watching Castiel open his door. He stepped inside and immediately slid out of his coat. He headed directly for the kitchen, not wasting any time.

He waved his hand at the counter. There were small boxes and bottles neatly lined up. Meg recognized a few as vitamin additives for food. "The best powdered and liquid sludge I could find here." Castiel pulled a cloth off a pile on the counter, "But I did manage to find some real ingredients too."

 _You went all out._ Meg said impressed. She didn't pay much attention to what anthrogenics ate on the station but she knew enough to know that real actual food wasn't exactly easy to find. Those buttery yellow lumps had to be expensive. _Where did you get cheese on a station?_

"Sun, she's from the analysis department, she has a bacterial culture that produces dairy...well...it's similar to dairy." Castiel said. He started picking up containers and adding water. "She grows meat as well but....I'll spare you the active process of eating it. The memory is there if you feel the need to torment yourself."

Meg felt the need to torment herself. She searched for the memory but couldn't find it. In the end Castiel had to think about it and gently push the memory at her. She was hit hard by an explosion of taste. It really was truly awful.

 _Ugh. Why did I do that to myself?_ Meg said disgusted. She had a lot of stim-files for taste but nothing so uniquely terrible as the memory of what Castiel had just shared with her.

"I told you." Castiel said, taking out a bowl and pouring the contents of two packages inside.

 _Yeah, yeah._ Meg scoffed. It had tasted terrible but she quietly saved the experience. She had been adding to her sense bank every time she went out with Castiel. The _'meat'_ that Sun grew was going to be her new absolute zero on her taste scale.

She watched as powders and liquids turned into lumpy shapes and different liquids. Cooking wasn't something she had ever thought to learn before, she didn't eat after all, so the whole process was fascinating. She wasn't sure how all the lumpy reconstituted batters were going to come together to make a meal but slowly, as Castiel’s hands worked, those lumpy batters started taking on the shape of a meal.

Castiel carefully arranged everything on a plate then placed the plate on the table. He sat down and picked up the fork. "Do you want to try?"

It took Meg a moment to realize he was offering up use of his hands again and this time his mouth too. _Do you mind? I won't if you don't want to._

She felt Castiel release control of his hands and mouth in response. She lunged forward, grabbing up nerve bundles and taking over. She stabbed the nearest thing on the plate with the fork and shovelled it into her borrowed mouth. It wasn't anything like any of the sense suits she had downloaded. She didn't have a single stim-file that had the rush of flavours or the movement of a tongue on teeth. She shovelled two more forkfuls into Castiel's mouth.

 _Slow down. You'll choke me._ Castiel warned.

"Sawfrry." Meg said through a mouthful of food. She stopped in shock. She hadn't actually thought about what she'd sound like using Castiel's voice. She swallowed. "My lab's too small and Crowley knows it." She huffed out a laugh. The low rumble made her laugh harder. "I don't know why I didn't think of this. Holy, I sound weird as you." She closed her mouth and hummed. She revelled in the low vibrations moving through Castiel's throat.

 _Amusing yourself?_ Castiel chuckled. Clearly _he_ was amused.

"I've never had vocal chords before and I never thought about trying it out." Meg said, still reveling in the way the sounds made the vibrations roll through them. "Now I'm gonna have to go download an entire suite of sensations." She had stim-files for the basic things, physical pain, hot, cold, sleeping, that sort of stuff. But she hadn't ever thought about what it would feel like to shove air through folds of flesh and make sound.

 _Why download them?_ Castiel asked. His voice was a unique mix of suggestive and nervous. _What do you want to feel?_

She felt Castiel's face pull into a sly smile. She wasn't sure who was responsible for it.

"Gonna sweet talk me first?" Meg said slyly.

 _It's **my** body._ Castiel retorted.

"You're letting me use it." Meg said. She shovelled another forkful of food into them. Maybe other intelligences were right about having more human-like proxies. _Eating_ might just be worth it. She could think of some _other_ things that might be worth it but she wasn't quite sure if Castiel was teasing her or not. She changed the subject back to something a bit more neutral.

"So how'd you learn to cook?" Meg asked in Castiel's voice. "They teach that in the New Eden military?"  

\---

He watched Meg polish off the dinner he'd made. It was a strange experience to feel himself eat without being the one doing the eating. He was always half sure he'd choke but nothing ever happened. The strangest thing was that anywhere Meg touched with his own hands it felt like a different person touching him.

When Meg finished everything on the plate- as well as seconds and thirds- she pulled back and let Castiel take back control. Castiel glanced at his clock. They had already spent most of the night simply indulging Meg's experience with taste and talking.

 _So...._ Meg said hesitantly. _You still up for some original research into touch sensory?_

Castiel clamped down on all his responses to blush. Meg was more than right about how convenient absolute control could be. He hoped she couldn't tell that he was stopping himself from turning an embarrassed pink. He cleaned up the table instead; putting the plate and utensils on the counter. "As long as you want to."

 _You're such a sweet talker._ Meg chuckled. Her laughter filled the back of his head. But you really don't have to cater to my whims if you don't want to. _I don't mind if you don't want to rush things._

"I don't think it'd be rushing things at this point." Castiel said dryly. He headed for his bed. It was still in the living room; displaced while they worked on Meg's proxy. "You've been quite literally wearing me for weeks."

 _So I take that as a yes? You want to be my original research partner?_ Meg said.

Castiel snorted in laughter. "That's nearly as bad as your chicken joke."

 _Hey! The chicken and egg joke is a classic._ Meg said, sounding mock offended.

"I'm not sure how it counts as a classic." Castiel said. He eyed the bed. "But yes. If you're...interested in a _research partner_ I think I could be persuaded."

 _Persuaded with more chicken jokes?_ Meg said too seriously.

"Most definitely not." Castiel said. He breathed deep then tugged his shirt over his head. He stripped down, not sure whether to go fast or slow. Meg wasn't offering up any suggestions. He laid out on the bed and closed his eyes. "Is this alright?"

 _More than alright._ Meg said. She almost sounded out of breath. He wasn't sure how she managed to do that when she had never needed to breathe.

He felt Meg tap into all his senses. He breathed out slowly and gathered up his confidence. He dragged his hand slowly down his side and across his stomach.

 _Oh. Do that again._ Meg said when his hand glided across his lower stomach. His hand brushed over that spot again. _Do you like that too?_

"Yes." Castiel let his hand drift across his stomach again. Meg made a surprised noise. Castiel smiled. "But it sounds like you like it more."

Castiel snaked his hand down further and brushed his hand down his dick until it was hard.

 _Oh. Whoa, that's some fancy nerve pulses._ Meg said sounding flustered. He felt her picking through something in his brain. She seemed to pause. _You mind if I try something?_

"By all means." Castiel said curious as to what she was going to— "Oh god!" An orgasm ripped through him.

He heaved in breath after breath. There was a strange fluttering feeling from Meg. She laughed like she was out of breath too.

 _Sorry. I didn't think that would happen._ Meg chuckled, sounding all too pleased with herself. _But I think I can safely say we both liked that._

Castiel huffed out a laugh.

They chatted quietly while they waited to try again. Meg suggested they share his limbs. This time Castiel used one hand while Meg took the other.

He felt her take control of one arm. She brushed it up and down his chest. He shivered.

 _You know, I wasn't joking about doing some research._ Meg said deviously. _I really am going to record some of this for future reference_ — _if you don't mind?_

"By all means." Castiel waved his arm in permission. "I'm glad I could help." Castiel reached down lower and brushed his hand down his cock‒ which Meg agreed with wholeheartedly much to his amusement.

She reveled in the new sensation for a moment before dipping her- his? their?- hand lower and tracing her fingers along the soft skin behind his balls.

Who hissed out the words, " _Ahh yes."_ was questionable. But she most definitely let out a stream of swears when Castiel plunged his hand down his- _their_ \- cock as she slipped a finger inside him.

Meg stopped as if she needed to collect her thoughts. _I don't know how the hell I'm supposed to think of this. Me? You? Us? But holy fiery hell don't stop. This is nothing like stim-porn._

"Better or worse? Or just different?" Castiel asked. He went back to languidly stroking his dick.

 _....different....better._ Meg said after some thought. _I can send you some if you want to compare._

Castiel chuckled. "Are you offering to send me your porn collection?"

 _Only if you want it._ Meg said slyly. _For important reference purposes, of course._

\---

Thank the universe she had thought to include porn on her partial. She would have gone off Castiel's memories but she still hadn't come across those memories. The way he organized his brain wasn't anything like the way she organized hers.

She knew enough that if she hooked her fingers up she'd be rewarded with soft groan and a shiver from Castiel; though she definitely liked it too. It sent sparks of pleasure every which way.

He stroked his hand faster the quicker she moved her fingers. Those sparks of pleasure burned in all the right ways. This was definitely something she was going to revisit later, possibly replay a few dozen times.

She had learned her lesson the first time, don't touch that nerve cluster at the base of his dick unless she wanted this all to be over.  It was better to just let the slow rise in pressure burn through them.

When Meg pressed a second finger into him Castiel groaned. Meg worked them in and out. _**Like** that?_

"Yes." Castiel groaned. He gripped his dick harder and rubbed his thumb over the head. "How does that feel?"

 _Like you should definitely do it again._ Meg said. She gave a pleased hum when he slid his thumb back over her- or should that be his?- dick. She really had to figure out how to think about this. Especially if this became a more frequent kind of thing.

She felt that build-up that had taken them by surprise last time. This time it was a steady climb to the top. His breathing came faster, which was her breathing too now, and his hand moved quicker over his dick, which was also hers too. She pumped her fingers in and out of him, another sensation that was hers but his too.

"Meg. Don't stop." Castiel growled.

 _Wasn't gonna._ Meg retorted. She could feel it coming on. It felt hot and electric and just out of reach until suddenly it was on them.

Castiel's back arched as he groaned. Meg rode out the wave pleasure with him. Castiel collapsed back down to the bed panting. He didn't move. Meg thought that was a great idea. Not moving ever was at the top of the list of great ideas. She didn't even want to think.

Well. Maybe she did a little.

 _You know....we could maybe do this again sometime._ Meg said casually.

Castiel made a huffing sound that was supposed to be a laugh.

 _Maybe._ Meg said coyly.

"Maybe." Castiel repeated.

 _Or, you know, definitely._ Meg said.

"Or definitely." Castiel agreed sleepily. He turned over onto his stomach and buried his face into his pillow. "Do you mind if I rest for a moment?"

 _No, go ahead._ Meg said. Castiel hummed out a pleased noise and closed his eyes. The world went dark for her but it wasn't anything like being trapped in the partial. She could feel Castiel's heart beat and the rise and fall of his lungs. There wasn't any silence waiting to shatter.

To her surprise she felt herself being pulled under with Castiel. It wouldn't be long before she could add a firsthand account of _sleeping_ to her stim-files. She double-checked that she was recording the sensation for the rest of herself back in her lab then slowly drifted off to sleep with Castiel. She could definitely think of worse ways to spend her time on Branch 8. Sleeping with Castiel wasn't one of them. If this was what she got for being stuck on Branch 8 she could deal with it.

For now.

 


End file.
